


Heart

by coeurastronaute



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Heart Transplant, doctor patient - Freeform, the greys au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-05 08:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13383996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coeurastronaute/pseuds/coeurastronaute
Summary: Lexa is a heart patient waiting a transplant and she falls for her doctor.





	1. Chapter 1

“But do you ever wear a shirt?” 

The blonde on the bench didn’t even flinch at the noise and intrusion in the locker room. Instead, she just groaned and rolled her shoulders, before massaging the stiffness that settled in her neck. The entirety of her night in surgery rested between her shoulder blades, slept snug in her muscles and pulled them tightly. 

“Like you mind it.” 

The fresh top hung limply in her other hand, braced precariously on her knee. The sun just rising outside the small windows made her head hurt, made her eyes burn. 

With another yawn, the intern doctor ran her hand along her cheek and tried to wake up from the five minute nap. She slipped her top on and fell forward, resting her forehead against the cool metal of the locker. 

“When’s the last time you slept in a bed?” Finn asked, holding a cup of coffee beneath her nose, waking her slightly. 

“I was in the on-call room on Four last night for twenty minutes.” 

“Show off.” He smiled as she drank the cup empty.

“Just my luck drawing call on the weekend,” Clarke shrugged. 

“Yeah, but you were in a nine hour surgery and got to do stuff,” Octavia offered. “Not a terrible shift. Better than sleeping.” 

“Says the one who got sleep.” 

“Come on. Rounds in five.” 

“Go on, I’m going to head down and get another cup of coffee.” 

The room began to empty quickly as the time drew closer for the day to officially begin. It took some effort, but Clarke made herself stand again, nodding to Octavia and Finn as they made their way out. She grabbed a few mints from her locker and pulled up her hair, making note that a shower should be in her future at some reasonable point in time. 

The hospital was easy for her. She knew that if she took the elevator down to three, got out, and went through the offices, she could get to the coffee in half the time. She knew that the best coffee was the cart by the East entrance. She knew it better than any other place on earth because she lived there, practically. She spent Christmases and Birthdays there, colored on the walls in the nursery, practiced stitches on fruit in the cafeteria, saw babies born, and husbands and sisters die. She knew it all. 

In a half asleep, Clarke moved through the quiet of the new day starting. The first round of nurses began to trickle in as the charts were passed off and the rest of the evening zombies were given their reprieve. 

“Look at that, she lives,” Raven greeted her at the cart, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. The sun wasn’t even a thought, just let it turn grey outside behind her friend. 

“Don’t start.” 

“Oh I’m going to start,” the tech grunted and sipped her coffee, hitching her hip and tapping her foot. “Four nights straight you haven’t been home. You don’t call. You don’t write.” 

“You’re seriously worse than my mother.” 

“Yeah, because your mother loves when you live in the hospital. Someone has to raise you properly.”

“I’ll be home tonight,” Clarke rolled her eyes. 

They didn’t have long, but they did get a chance to catch up on the elevator ride upstairs where Raven got off first, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. 

“I’ll see you tonight. I mean it. A good sleep will do you well.” 

“Yes, Mom.” 

Clarke earned the finger as the door closed where she smiled to herself and shook her head. The coffee soothed her chest and almost lulled her into calmness despite her need to wake and be alive. With another loud yawn, she finished the cup before reaching the next floor. 

When the doors opened, it was chaos, pure and simple, and Clarke tossed her trash and followed it, the notion of rounds lost to her momentarily. Still three floors from where her colleagues nervously waited to be quizzed and belittled and tortured with facts, Clarke hopped into action as the code was called in one of the rooms. She tied up her hair and went to work as the first doctor there. 

“She’s flatlining,” a nurse explained amidst the activity. 

“Push epinephrine,” Clarke barked as she scanned the chart. “Charge paddles.” 

The girl on the table was not any older than herself, but the scars on her chest showed an age that could not be measured by dates. Clarke swallowed as she listened to the quiet cavity. 

“Doctor,” another nurse handed paddles. 

“You’re going to be okay,” Clarke whispered as she put the pads on skin. 

It took a while for the buzz to calm, but when the adrenaline left her body, she felt exhausted. Each beep on the monitor made her almost sick, but it was there, and she was exhausted. 

All of the thoughts flashed before her eyes. It was never her choice to be a doctor, and if she were being honest, she despised these moments. She lived them. And she hated it. She loved it and she hated it more than anything else, and that was something she detested about herself; her inability to make up her mind, to allow herself to be happy. 

She pushed her wrist against her forehead and wiped away a bit of sweat before leaning against the window as the patient was stabilized. 

“What happened here?” a voice screeched as soon as Clarke caught her breath. 

“Her heart stopped.”

“What did you do?” her mother rushed to the girl in the bed and began checking Clarke’s worth as the other residents came through, giving her sympathetic or jealous glances. 

“I ran the code. She’s breathing, but the studies show–”

“I know what the studies show. I what i can’t understand is how you found yourself in my patients room and did not call me!” The anger was familiar, was a second home. 

“The code was–”

“Dr. Griffin! You enjoy missing rounds and being a cowboy, you can enjoy being chained to this patient.” Abby Griffin was nothing short of terrifying on a good day, and her daughter was never accused of getting special treatment. If anything, she was looked at with pity, with an innate sadness at the predicament. “I operated on Ms. Woods when I was pregnant with you. Put her heart back together four times already, and you just zap it raw!” 

“She was–”

“Give me labs and scans in twenty. You can phone her family while we operate. Dr. Collins, you will assist.” Abby paused in the middle of the room, as the chaos stilled to placid calm around her. “I have walked this patient through numerous surgeries and scares, and we will get her a new heart or we’ll be starting over with a new class of residents next year.”

* * *

**Day 1**

The familiar tightness in her chest welcomed the waking patient. She licked her lips or at least tried to fight the dryness that came with the drips and medications, the sour taste of chemicals pulsating through her body in equal measure with her blood. Even before she opened her eyes, she heard the sound of home, or the same kind of home she knew since she was born. The faint electric hum of the machines, the whir of the breathing machine, the scratch of the needle that drew out her heartbeats.

Still night, she saw the familiar vase of flowers courtesy of her mother against a far wall. The room was so similar to all of the others, there was almost a universality to it that was surreal and at the same time both comforting and jarring, like a sick game of deja vu.

The only distinct difference in this room was the blonde currently curled up asleep on the chair beside the bed, hands and shoulders hunched beneath her white coat. Lexa furrowed and cleared her throat once more before slowly closing her eyes, wondering if she was higher than normal. If she opened her eyes again, maybe she’d be gone. That would be best.

Despite the ache in her body, she pressed the button and let the bed sit her up. The noise of the bed and her own coughing made the girl’s foot drop and she startled herself awake.

“I’m not going to get the new heart, am I?” Lexa clenched her jaw and stared at the foot of the bed. 

“Hi,” the doctor blinked hard and wiped her wrist across the drool on her chin before digging the heel of her palm into her eyes.

As tough as she wanted to look, Lexa couldn’t help the wincing and the way her chest ached and warbled under the pressure of her day, and so she coughed and dropped her hands after struggling to lift her arm and wired hands to pour herself some water. She knew bad, and she felt bad.

“Let me,” the doctor stood and blinked slightly, squinting at the watch on her wrist and running a hand through her hair. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I had a heart attack.”

“Drink. It’ll help. We have you on–”

“You don’t have to rattle off the list. I know,” Lexa coughed through her dry mouth before eyeing the doctor who held the straw for her to drink from.

Between them, the fluorescence of the lights buzzed just below the whirring of the monitors and electricity that powered the machines. Closer than before, Lexa tried to focus on appraising the doctor but was distracted by the scrubs and the way the water helped for a minute before blue eyes made her mouth dry again.

“Can I check your incision?” The doctor received only a small nod before the patient locked her eyes on her hands and the wires and sighed. “I’m Clarke. Dr. Griffin. Dr. Clarke Griffin. I was… I ran the code.” It was more of a confession than an explanation. Scolding herself, she rubbed the diaphragm of her stethoscope on her shoulder to warm it before placing it on the patient’s back as she sat forward. “Deep breath.”

Lexa went through the procedure mechanically, as she’d experienced infinitely so she had been born, so that it was second nature. She grit her teeth as she laid back and felt warm hands on her collar bone, lifting the bandage that was now there. The only consolation was the eyes that now looked to her skin and the bit of lip that got pulled under a tooth as the doctor concentrated.

“Say it. You have to say it,” she murmured.

“There was an infection,” the doctor placed the bandage again gingerly. “Were you experiencing tightness? Pain? Shortness of breath?”

“You just described my entire existence.”

“You spiked a fever, and–” the doctor swallowed and hung her hands on the stethoscope around her neck.

“Did you call my sister?”

“She said she’d be on the next flight.” 

“Dammit!” Lexa barked and coughed, a fit that lasted a few minutes until the doctor helped her up and sip more of the water. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“We had to put in a pacemaker. You need family–”

Green eyes flashed at her, the pale complexion seeming to almost glow with a quiet anger that was so directed inward, Clarke was almost certain it would stop the new machinery in its tracks. It took a few moments before it tired her too much, before it melted and turned to hopeless resignation and determination at the facts of life now.

“Why are you in my room, Dr. Clarke Griffin?”

“You were alone. I didn’t want you to wake up alone. To hear from anyone else.”

“I’ve lived in hospitals long enough,” a cough interrupted, “to notice a punishment when I see it.”

“I was late for rounds because I ran your code,” Clarke confessed with a smile before taking her seat again. She earned a smile, a small one, but still it was there as the patient leaned back and closed her eyes. She smiled at the sight of it.

For a long moment they were quiet, and the doctor assumed her patient had drifted off to sleep again, that was how still and peaceful she remained with the small smile on the corner of her mouth. And even as it slipped away, it wasn’t until she saw the lump move in her throat and her brow furrow that she realized she was still awake.

“Don’t tell my sister,” she whispered. “I’ll do it.”

“Ms. Woods–”

“Lexa,” she interrupted, turning to meet the doctor’s eyes again with a sigh. “I’m dying, aren’t I?”

“The pacemaker will–”

“If you can’t be honest at four in the morning, then when can you?” she asked seriously, taking Clarke off guard at the starkness of the thought. “I’ve always been dying. Now I’m just very much dying.”

“The pacemaker will get you over the infection. But the damage is intensive. This heart would have been a good fit.”

“Don’t tell my sister,” Lexa asked again. “Tell her this is a good idea.”

“It is.”

“Tell her it will help.”

“It will.”

“Good.”

“You’re not going to die, Lexa.” She wasn’t sure what made her say it. In fact, she was almost certain that was rule number one of things she was never supposed to promise, but it was four in the morning, and she had to hope.

“That’s something people who aren’t dying never get sick of telling people who are.” Softly, Lexa licked her lips and closed her eyes again, amused at herself.

“If I’m wrong, at least I don’t have to hear you complain about it.”

“There’s that,” she chuckled. “You can put your feet up, if it helps you sleep.”

The monitors sighed and hummed their lullaby and Clarke just stared at the sleeping profile in the bed. Timidly, she put her feet on the edge of the bed, burrowing deeper into the chair.

* * *

**Day 2**

“Twenty-six year old female who came in for a heart transplant,” Clarke recited, careful not to look at the grinning girl in the bed who watched the show, slightly amused and already a veteran. “Admitted with signs of chest infection which led to an infarction and the placement of a pacemaker yesterday.”

“You forgot charming, with a pallid kind of beauty that some may find unique,” Lexa interrupted, earning chuckles from the doctors spaced around her. She coughed and held her chest but smiled through it. “I also studied Economics and enjoy movies.”

“Lex, let them finish,” her sister scolded, annoyed at the antics.

“I think it’s only fair I let certain doctors know that there’s more to me than a bad heart,” she argued. “Right, Dr. Griffin?”

“I, uh-”

“Right,” Clarke’s mother nodded from beside the bed, much to her daughter’s relief, who buried her nose deep in the chart and away from anyone else’s eyes. “Lexa has been a patient of mine for over twenty years now, and we are going to do everything we can to get her out of here with a new heart.”

“What about the pacemaker?” the sister stood. Clarke sized up the angles and the worry, noticed the same kind of quiet anger that simmered there, despite today’s easygoing tone of the patient.

“It will help,” Dr. Griffin explained.

As she began her explanation, engrossing the residents and the sister, Lexa turned her attention to the girl who fell asleep beside her bed, something no one outside of her family had done ever before, and that felt important, though she wasn’t sure why.

“Pst. Hey,” she whispered until she got Clarke’s attention.

“I’m learning.”

“I’m sorry for last night.”

“You just woke up from surgery and found out bad news. You’re allowed to be upset,” Clarke promised. “Now hush.”

“I wasn’t upset. I was just honest. Four in the morning is the best time to be honest.”

“You’re feeling better today.”

“You called my sister. I have to be the brave face.”

“Clarke, can you list the side effects of the pacemaker?” her mother interrupted.

“Yes, of course,” her daughter stood up a bit straighter.

Lexa shrugged as her sister gave her a look as the doctor’s spoke. Lexa made herself cough and look paler, or more sickly, to avoid another glare, though her sister was unfazed by her ways.

“Since you seem to understand them well enough, I hope you are comfortable. You and Ms. Woods will be spending some time together. You are still assigned to this case, Clarke. I want hourly physicals and updated on the progress.”

“Yes, chief,” the doctor swallowed her argument.

“Thank you, Dr. Griffin.”

“Wait, I just got it,” Lexa stopped them as everyone began to file out. “That’s your mom.”

“Please go easy on her,” Abby patted Lexa’s leg and gave her a wink. “I know how you like to break in the residents. I hope my daughter proves more competent.”

“You got it, Dr. G.”

Stuck somewhere between mortified and confused, Clarke was the last one to file out with the group to attempt to argue with her mother. She looked once more at the girl in the bed who was already getting a stern look and finally an eye roll from her sister.

* * *

**Day 4**

It was the loneliness. The weird kind of loneliness that came with never being alone, that really got to Lexa during her stays. Her sister lingered, popped in and out, refusing to go home unless it meant taking Lexa with her, and so she hovered. The nurses knocked only out of politeness, though it was an empty gesture. The doctors took blood, ran tests, prodded and poked at all hours, and with irregularity, and still, Lexa felt insanely isolated and alone and annoyed by the entirety of not having solitude.

“Blood, medication, or inspection?” she sassed, not even looking up from her book as the door opened again.

“Polite conversation and maybe a peek at your vitals before I leave.” The voice made her look up and smile, somewhat relieved to not be alone suddenly. “If you don’t mind me hiding from my mom for a little while.”

“Pull up a chair, Clarke.”

Every spare minute, Clarke found herself in the room no the cardiac floor. First, because her mother, and then because her mother. But she enjoyed Lexa’s wit, and sass, and overall demeanor, which was different than other patient’s. She enjoyed her eyes, and her teasing, the little bits of herself that weren’t in her chart, and Clarke felt the echo of her own words, her promise that she would be alright, and it weighed her down and made her feel guilty.

The color slowly appeared in the patient’s cheeks again, her tan skin becoming less pale and porcelain. The green in her eyes sparkled against the sun, hidden behind her glasses. Even in her oversized sweater and hospital gown, she retained a sense of grace and confidence that was hard fought, and well deserved. There were many things Clarke learned and saw and kept.

“Sleeping in my room, sneaking in at all hours. The nurses will talk.”

“Do you want my pudding or not?”

“Is it butterscotch?”

“No.”

“Then yes.”

The pack landed with a thud on the table as Lexa calmly placed her book beside it. She watched the blonde take her seat and start to eat the sandwich on her tray.

“I’m getting better, aren’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“No heart for me then.”

“Nope.”

“Your mom said I’ll be out of here in a few days.” She shyly took a bite of her pudding despite the fact that she hated it. She took it only because she thought it was why Clarke kept bringing them, to make her eat, to make her feel welcomed, because she liked talking about books and watching movies until late, until Clarke fell asleep in her room. So she ate the terrible pudding.

“You will. You’re going to be fine. Your pacemaker is doing exactly what it should.”

“She said about three months before the thickening of my heart makes it impossible to be off the list.”

“Yeah,” Clarke nodded and slowly set her sandwich down. “Something like that.”

“So that gives me a window of a few weeks to really woo you on a date, you know, not as a patient.”

“That’s what you’re thinking about?” she rolled her eyes.

“I give myself five minutes to wallow,” Lexa shrugged, pushing up her glasses with her middle finger adorably. “Maybe ten, and then I just keep going.”

“You’re my most difficult patient.”

“Because I hit on you?”

“A lot of them do.”

“Then why?”

“Because it works.”

The quiet came swiftly and Lexa couldn’t help her smile as she dug out more of the dessert from the cup. She didn’t look up, just sat victoriously there, leaned back and bathed in that kind of success that she hadn’t been too sure of recently.

“You know, when I go, you’ll actually have to go home. Stop showering in my bathroom, sleeping in my chair, talk to your mom.”

“That’s tomorrow’s problem.”

“That’s the problem with you healthy people. There’s always tomorrow. It’s annoying.”

“Do you ever talk about anything other than dying?” Clarke snorted, tossing her sandwich down with a dull thud.

“The problem of rising interest rates and the Feds inability to monitor the corresponding drop in jobs. Foreign debt and trading on futures. The loopholes in the tax bracket that will inevitably lead to a complete rewriting of the law and how exciting that will be,” the patient listed. “World markets and the rising strength of the South American middle class. The proper order to watch all of the Die Hard movies.”

“I have yet to hear any of this.”

“You never asked, Doc.”

“Point taken.”

“Maybe tonight. You know, Top Gun is going to be on cable. And I know every word. I think my sister is going to be at the hotel taking a break.”

“As tempting as that is. I actually am being forcibly dragged out by my roommate.”

“Finally going on that date with the floppy-haired doctor?” Lexa smiled sadly, a different kind of smile that the doctor couldn’t place.

“He’ll be there.”

“Good. You need a night out of here. You’re bound to turn into your mother at this rate.”

“If I haven’t already,” Clarke chuckled and stood, tossing her trash in the bin.

She washed her hands, moving around the room as if she lived there herself, as if she understood it entirely, as if she was comfortable. Lexa watched and sighed, looking down at the old faint scar that peaked out from her chest.

“Just a look. I promise it’s the last of the day. I’ll tell everyone to leave you alone for a little while.”

“Thanks,” she nodded, leaning back and closing her eyes as familiar fingers moved along her skin. A minute later, the stethoscope pressed into her and listened to her heart beating, as it raced despite her desire to control it.

“Sounds good. Clear. The infection is healing up well.”

“You’re a miracle worker.”

“I’ll stop by before I head out for the night. See if you need anything.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have some family stuff to go over with my sister.”

“Okay. Well,” Clarke stood awkwardly for the first time ever in the room with the patient. It felt different this time, after acknowledging that it’d be a night apart, despite the fact that they hadn’t spent a whole night together. And certainly not together. But in the same room. These things got away from Clarke quickly. “Have a good night. The nurses have my number if you need anything.”

“You never answered my question…”

“I don’t know anything about foreign purchasing power or national debt.”

“When I’m not a patient, should I stick around town and ask you out?”

“Ms. Woods…”

“Ms. Woods? Seriously?”

“Lexa… you’re… you’re still a patient.”

“Just wait for it. I’ll grow on you.”

It was the minute all of her training fought against all of her instincts. She wanted to tell her that she had, for some reason, in the span of an intense few days, grown on the doctor. Clarke wanted to tell Lexa that she sat up at night, despite exhaustion, listening to her monitor because she was terrified for reasons she couldn’t place and didn’t want to think about ever. This was the second, she could forget every rule she’d been given and agree. But for more reasons than just the ethics of the medicine, she couldn’t, she wouldn’t.

“Most difficult patient,” she sighed with a heavy heart and honest smile. “Be good tonight.”

“Have fun, Clarke.”

“You too.”

* * *

**Day 5**

It wasn’t that the bar wasn’t nice, or that her friends weren’t entertaining, or that Finn didn’t try to make his move. It wasn’t that a night away from the hospital wasn’t needed or that she even wanted to go back. But for some reason, just an hour after arriving, after just a few drinks, Clarke found herself walking across the street back to the hospital through the thick August heat in her heels and dress with no real motivation at all, and with no real understanding of her own desire. It was as if her brain went on autopilot for fifteen minutes and she somehow ended up back where she started.

From the hall she stared through the window on the door and watched the patient flip the page in her book, watched her push up her glasses and pinch her nose before adjusting them careful there again. The messy brown hair was no longer wild, but instead braided to the side. The bit old sweater swallowed her shoulders, and the heft of the pages of her novel were now more to the read side than the unread, and Clarke backed away, leaning against her back on the wall because she wasn’t sure how she got there.

It was against the rules. It was frowned upon, and in her head she tried to dismiss it as just a way for a sick patient to pass the time, to amuse herself, and that worked sometimes. But she ended up staying late and talking for hours for the past week, and that was different.

“Dr. Griffin? Is something wrong?” the sister approached, making Clarke jolt upwards and away from the wall.

“What? No. I was just stopping by to make sure Lexa didn’t need anything before I left.”

“She said you left hours ago,” Anya eyed the blonde doctor, letting her eyes judge the entirety of body displayed in clothes that weren’t scrubs.

“Before I left to go home,” the doctor corrected her lie.

“I’ve never seen my sister in such high spirits, and I think I know why,” she smiled, purposefully eying the ample chest on display. The blonde blushed, deep crimson and scarlet and hot beneath her skin. “I never thanked you for calling me. If she had it her way, she’d never let us come when she was in the hospital. Been running around since she was eighteen. And like an idiot I follow across the country.”

“It must be hard, to just watch.”

“It’s not the fact that I watch her sickness,” Anya sighed. “It’s the fact that I have to watch her in pain. Some days I almost wish she was free of it. There are people who are not meant to be chained. She tolerates it as best she can. But if you watch closely, you can still see the wild behind her eyes. Like a stallion or a circus lion.”

“I can imagine,” Clarke nodded solemnly.

“She doesn’t call. I’m glad you called.”

“There’s nothing happening, you know? Between us. I’m her doctor.”

“I honestly don’t care,” Anya shrugged. “She’s happy. As happy as she can be, and I’ll take a few days of that however I can get it. Give her these. She’s running low.”

The stack of books was thrust in Clarke’s hands before she could object and defend herself, to explain any further that nothing happened, nothing would happen. Instead, she just swallowed as Anya waved and told her she was going to the bar herself.

If she had stayed at the bar, she wouldn’t have been there, wouldn’t have had to duck inside the room so quickly because her mother turned a corner and made her decision for her, would have been able to effectively avoid all thought of her mother for a full night.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Lexa grinned at the intrusion as the doctor rested her head against the back of the door, pressing herself there.

“More like a demon.” Carefully, Clarke peaked through the window in the door and saw the familiar back of the chief of surgery walking away and she let herself breathe.

“I like your mom. She’s seen my insides.”

“I’ve seen your insides.”

“Not first hand, yet.”

“Must be why I like her better,” Lexa decided as she closed the book in her lap and placed it on her table. “Didn’t I give you the night off?”

“I don’t work for you,” Clarke sassed, tossing the books on the table and stealing a jello cup from the barely touched dinner tray. “And I was promised a movie.”

“I don’t know what is sadder,” the patient made a show of grabbing the remote, as if she were inconvenienced by the arrival .”The fact that I’m stuck here, or the fact that you choose to stick around when you could be out of here.”

“Definitely your shitty heart.”

“Date went that badly?”

Amused by the display, Lexa watched Clarke take the seat beside the bed, kick off her heels, put her feet up on the edge, and begin eating the red jello.

“No. I just… Figured you might miss me.”

“My sister is coming in.”

“I passed her in the hall. She said since I’m here she’s taking the night off.”

“Good. Maybe she’ll find her own doctor.”

“I think you’re hogging them.”

“Yeah, something like that,” Lexa nodded with a smile.

The night passed quickly, the two falling into a familiar rhythm, a familiar quiet. They laughed and whispered and interrupted the movie at times. Mostly, they just enjoyed each other’s company and the rare kind of safety that could come when one knows the other person and is not expected to do anything other than simply exist in their vicinity. There was no need for any acts, for any words, to be an ideal of anything, just honest and there.

“People are going to talk if you keep spending the night, Dr. Griffin,” Lexa mused as another movie ended.

“I know. And I haven’t gotten a proper night’s sleep in a week,” Clarke yawned, rubbing her neck. “Scoot.”

“What?” she balked in the bed.

“You have to share.”

“You could go home,” the patient argued as she shifted to the side.

“I have to be up in two hours for rounds. If I go home, shower, and come back that means I’ll only get about forty-five minutes of sleep.”

It took some adjusting, but half off the bed, the doctor finally stilled. Lexa felt her heart beating faster and wondered if this was what it would take to kill her, if this girl was going to be the final straw that broke her heart on more than one metaphysical and possibly literally physical level.

“I knew it,” Lexa whispered as Clarke curled to the side. They touched along one side, but did not touch for anything else. “You’ve been dying to get in this bed the whole time.”

“This is strictly for proximity’s sake.”

“What about that patient, physician line?”

“You’ll be discharged in a few days.”

“Plus I can’t partake in strenuous activities.”

“What does that mean?”

“You look like one hell of a strenuous activity.”

She heard the chuckle that came from the girl in her bed, and Lexa stared at the television so as not to chance a look. A look would be damn deadly.

“You have no idea.”

* * *

**Day 8**

It became a habit strictly out of necessity. That was what Clarke told herself. The late night talks made her feel human again, feel like she could talk to another living, breathing entity and relate on some level, that she wasn’t losing her humanity or becoming averse to such things as life and death. 

It was for her patient, who needed someone to distract her, who needed someone to be honest with at four am because it was good for her to not wallow after the surgery and loss of the new heart. 

It was her mother’s fault, for making her monitor Lexa religiously. It was almost her fault that Lexa was smart and funny. She kept saving her, and thus a woman who understood life and could articulate herself well and who made bad jokes and who was outraged by Clarke’s terrible habits, but kept eating all the damn pudding despite her apparent hatred of it, that woman was born because her mother kept saving her. 

It was purely platonic and it was purely innocent. 

Except that it wasn’t. 

It was selfish and it was a lie, but still, there was enough denial to allow Clarke to slip back into Lexa’s bed for the third night, as tired and drained as she was, as much as she told herself she would go home. She always said goodnight, and always ended back, and she understood how planets felt. 

“Are you going back home?” Clarke asked as she stretched and hunched her back, rolling her neck against the soreness.

“I was thinking of sticking around for a bit.”

“What about your sister?”

“She has a life in New York,” Lexa shrugged and yawned, before adjusting her glasses. “I’m not really a fan of the city. We have a house on the lake.”

“We?”

“My family,” she explained. “When I was born, and your mother took my case, we were here so much, they just commited to have a place close by, and then when my dad died, my mom decided to never leave Miami, and Anya got her job, and I still had a bad heart, but the best memories of my family are in that house, so I took it.”

“What if something happens and no one is around?”

“You’ll just have to come check on me every so often. Feed, water, check my vitals.”

“I don’t even know what this city is. I’ve lived here most of my life, and I’ve never really seen it.”

“See, you’re a sadder case than me.”

The doctor just rolled her eyes and settled against the pillows. The dim light of the hallway outside slid across the floor as the only source of light other than the lamp behind the bed. All was quiet so early in the morning and late in the night that neither could be sure which was which.

“This has been one of the best stays I’ve ever had in a hospital.”

“Lexa…”

“Don’t ruin it just yet, Clarke.”

“You’re a patient.”

“I know.”

“I’m a doctor.”

“You don’t want to be one.”

“Sometimes I do.”

“You just want to take everyone’s pain, but that’s not the same, and it will eat you up.”

“I’m too tired to think about this,” the doctor yawned again and closed her eyes. She felt Lexa’s move to look at her. She swallowed and kept her eyes close.

They were quiet despite the honest hour, despite the final night, despite their brains working in double time to comprehend that tomorrow they would exist outside of the walls separately, and it was the epitome of bittersweet.

“You’re right, you know,” Clarke eventually whispered, more quiet and more honest than ever before. “But for now it’s a good cause.”

Gently, her hand slipped to Lexa’s chest where she rested it softly. The warmth of it made her heart drum, but Lexa remained completely still. Clarke’s palm weighted her down and made her feel complete, full. The thumb ran along the base of her throat and stilled after a moment of getting acquainted with the area in a new way.

“You’re going to fall for me, Doc,” Lexa chuckled. “And you have no idea.”

“Don’t ruin the moment.”

“How about if I live, you quiet.” 

“Well that’s an unfair bet.” 

“I mean it. If I die, I won’t much care if you’re a workaholic who is withering away.” 

“But if you don’t?” 

“Well, I’d want better for you.” 

“You don’t even know me.” 

“Okay,” Lexa sighed and smiled at the lie.

* * *

The list was made before she even left the hospital. All the sites and experiences that one must have in order to truly live in the city and call it home, and yet Clark could not recognize most. 

“Didn’t think I’d recognize you without the fluorescent lighting and scrubs,” Lexa greeted the doctor by folding down the newspaper on the small table. 

She smiled a different kind of smile, and Clarke could see what her sister once spoke about, with the freedom that came with being healthy, or as healthy as could be, for the moment. Hair still wild, and glasses still firmly in place, she was something out of a movie, something Clarke felt herself staring at and unable to stop. 

“Hi.” 

“You’re going to be late to rounds, aren’t you?” 

“I’m off today. Officially off. Won’t step foot on hospital grounds.” 

“I reckon that’s easier with your worst patient gone.” 

“It helps,” Clarke smiled, fluttering with herself as she took the seat that was offered to her at the table. “How has it been? Being out?” 

“I’m good. Do you want to take my vitals?” 

“I might,” she shrugged. 

“I can’t believe you came.” 

“Might as well as fulfill someone’s dying wish.” 

“Ah!” Lexa barked and then laughed. “Is that what this is? A Make-a-wish?” She earned a mischievous shrug. “You call it that. I’ll call it a date.” 

“We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

* * *

Lexa was smart. Witty and dry in a way that kept Clarke on her toes. She hated talking through movies and the way that air conditioning felt on her skin. She craved the humidity of outside, opened all the windows and doors and left them open all night. 

She never commanded a room, but she knew how to occupy space and to have substance. She liked the way trees looked from underneath. She hated pineapples and the way leather felt when it was new. 

When she was nineteen, her father died in a car accident. She went to the airport in her funeral dress and took the first flight out, which wasn’t to anywhere romantic or awe-inspiring at all. Six hours later, she walked off the plane in Boise and spent a month driving around with the windows down in an old Civic that she bought for five hundred dollars. 

The only time she ever used her bad heart as an excuse was when her mother invited her home for some celebration, and she claimed she was getting a check up. 

For an entire month, Clarke learned everything she could, studied her, remembered more about her heart patient than she did anything for her job, and when they called each other at four in the morning and talked about the future, about their own and each others, they both fell asleep craving more.

* * *

**Day 56**

“Lex?” 

The sound of squeaking sneakers accompanied the realization as the doctor who was hurrying across the hospital caught a glimpse of familiar green eyes and quickly retreated a few doors. 

“Still a speed walker,” Lexa smiled as she pulled on her shirt. 

“Are you alright? What’s wrong?” Clarke grabbed the chart from the intern. “Why didn’t you call me?” 

“I’m fine.” 

“You’re in a hospital,” the doctor argued. 

“Just a little pain, but Dr. James–”

“Wagner,” the intern interrupted. 

“Right. Dr. Wagner is doing a great job, and so I’m just going to head home.” 

“Get out,” Clarke murmured, prompting the young doctor to lean forward slightly. “Get out!” she yelled without looking up from the chart. “Looking at a severe heart case without even calling it in. Incompetent.” 

“Well that’s a bit harsh.” 

“Take your shirt off.” 

“Finally,” Lexa grinned and wiggled her eyebrows. “I was hoping for a better place, but this seems fitting. Go gentle. I bruise easily.” 

“Lexa, this is serious.” 

“Don’t start. I’m fine. He said I’m just anemic. I’ll go grab a burger. Or better yet we can grab a burger together. Take each other’s shirts off, whatever.” 

“Just… sit down and let me give you a work up.” 

She could feel her pocket vibrating with the surgery she was missing, but still, Clarke watched the patient roll her eyes and agree by sitting and waiting. For the first time in a long time, Clarke felt fear and that cold shiver of relief deep in her gut.

* * *

**Day 72**

The code wasn’t anything special, or so she thought, but as Clarke made her way to the emergency room, she noticed the familiar glasses set on the table and she paused, feeling a weird sense of deja vu, or sublime fear rush through her chest, as her body felt it before her head recognized what it meant. 

The noise of the room disappeared and all she saw was a pale Lexa in the bed with wires and hands all over. 

Frantically, her eyes grew wide when they found Clarke and she looked so weak and so scared, Clarke was unsure what to do. 

She ignored the words coming from her mother, she ignored the noises, and she pushed the hair from Lexa’s forehead before leaning her own head against it. 

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, stroking Lexa’s chin as she struggled to breathe. 

Clarke kissed her a second later. 

“Well that’s not fair,” Lexa gasped. “You’re bound to break my heart like that.” 

“We have to go,” Dr. Griffin interjected. 

Lexa’s hands still grabbed at Clarke’s. The doctor just smiled and nodded and kissed her again. 

“I’ll see you after,” she promised. 

Her mother stood in front of her as the bed moved toward surgery. The rage and anger on her face drew tight all of her features and Clarke did not even fear it, the worry replaced any kind of other self-preservation. 

“Sit in that chair,” her mother pointed. “And do not move.”

* * *

**Day 75**

“Hey, did you see this cool thing they put in me?” Lexa grinned and lifted her gown from her abdomen once again, the tubes now embedded in her body. “I’m like a cyborg.” 

“It’s an LVAD, and it’s barely anything to be happy about,” Clarke huffed. 

“Remember when you kissed me? Can we do more of that?” 

“I thought you were going to die.” 

“Well that seems like a silly reason to kiss someone,” Lexa dismissed her. “Are you going to tell me how it went with your mother?” 

“I’m not allowed to work your case.” 

“So what brings you here?” 

Clarke rolled her eyes and kissed the patient again. She dragged it out to untenable ends until her fingertips felt the thumping of the heart in the chest. 

Even with the sounds of clearing throats at the doors, they took a moment more to enjoy the sweetness in the middle of the artificial room. Clarke knew well enough to blush horrendously when she met her mother’s eyes. 

“Don’t be mad at her, Dr. G. I’m irresistible. She had no chance once my laser-like focus was set on her,” Lexa smiled cockily from the bed. Clarke whispered a bye before leaving as quickly as she could. 

“You’re going to get her in trouble,” Abby informed her patient as she began checking the implantation sites. 

“I’m a good kind of trouble.”

* * *

**Day 104**

“What’s the problem?” Clarke asked, leaning back exhausted in the chair beside the bed. She adjusted her feet and yawned, letting her temple rest on her knuckles as she stared at the brooding thing in the bed. 

“Nothing.” 

“Okay.” 

The quiet continued and Clarke let her eyes wonder to the television for a moment before drifting back to Lexa. Her body grew more lean, more skeletal, the inactivity and bed rest causing her to lose the spirit that usually haunted her body. 

“Talk to me,” she whispered. 

“I’m fine.” 

“No you’re not.” 

Lexa swallowed before closing her eyes and leaning back into the pillows. Clarke watched her chest rise and fall. 

“I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.” 

Clarke climbed into the bed with her and breathed in the smell of her skin.


	2. Chapter 2

**Day 193**

“Just one,” Lexa whispered, her lips moving against Clarke’s forehead. “Just for a second.” 

“Go to sleep.” 

“I’m a simple girl, Clarke, but I have needs.” 

“And me showing you my boobs is going to heal you?” 

“A boob,” she corrected, “And nothing else has worked so far. I’m all about alternative medication and experimenting.” 

Exhausted and smiling, Clarke burrowed into Lexa’s old sweatshirt harder, slid her hand under the frayed edge of it and rubbed the soft spot of skin over her hip. With a yawn she let it drift higher and hold ribs before she closed her eyes and adjusted her leg that slipped between the patient she was currently using as a pillow.

It was a long three months since the incident that got Lexa admitted semi-permanently. Three months of ups and downs and three months of them. And now Lexa was the miracle case that terrified Clarke. She was the girl that was getting stronger than ever on the LVAD, and she was getting ready to leave again.

“Why do you want me to show you my boobs? You can’t do anything with them?”

“I’m dying, not dead,” Lexa explained, her hand sliding lower, ghosting over before grabbing a hand full of ass. “I’m sure I can still do plenty with them.”

“That’s all I need on my conscious, killing a girl with my boobs.”

“What a way to go though,” she sighed softly, dreaming of the possibilities.

There was a spot, Clarke was certain, where she sniffed it too hard, where she dug her nose in and breathed too often, trying to bottle up as much of the memory as she could, right there on the collarbone of Lexa’s ancient, almost threadbare MIT sweatshirt that had been her father’s.

“Sorry,” Lexa mumbled as Clarke flinched from her cold hands finding skin on her back. “Poor blood flow.”

“Come here,” Clarke whispered, holding her and and tucking it under her own chin. She kissed the knuckles and closed her eyes again. “You can touch my butt later.”

Lexa remained still. She had a girl in her bed who knew all the bad parts, who saw her scars and scans and still wanted to take the risk of watching her die. It was a lot, and Lexa was sorry for it. But she hugged her harder and closed her eyes as she kissed Clarke’s hair once more, inhaling the dampness of it, the fresh-from-the-shower smell.

“How was surgery?”

“Long. But good.”

“Did you tell your mom that you’re quitting?”

“Boobs you said?” Clarke deflected. “I have some of those lying around.”

“You said two weeks ago you were going to do it.”

“What’s the rush? I mean, it’s not like I’m wasting my life trying to save lives. It’s a noble lie to live.”

“Because I want you to be happy.”

“I’m happy right now.”

“Good.”

The truth was that she’d almost said it twelve hundred times. Every time she saw her mother, she almost told her she didn’t want to do this anymore, and yet when the words were right there on the tip of her tongue, she found herself mute and afraid. The courage that Lexa gave her to free herself suddenly waned to nothing more than a natural predisposition to listen to whatever her mother was going on about at the time.

Clarke could never say that though, could never admit that she was afraid, and so she just bore that secret and bore the rest of it with a quiet that made it so that no one knew she suffered at all under the unyielding weight of her own honesty.

“You’ve been in a good mood the past few days.”

“I’ve been getting to grab my doctor’s butt. And goodness, what a wonderful time that has been for me.”

“If only it had medicinal properties.”

“I just feel better. I get to go home soon, and I guess it kind of clicked one day that you put up with me being a terror, and stuck around,” she shrugged slightly. “I might be dying but I’m very alive right now, and I want to fill each moment with this, and I don’t want you to have any memories of me being terrible. Just this.”

“Do you always have to talk about dying?” Clarke sat up furrowing and gripping the sweatshirt.

Perplexed because she thought she was being nice, Lexa looked confused and surprised by the way the day was going suddenly. She just met with angry blue eyes. She pushed the glasses up on her nose as the cohabitant escaped the bed.

“I didn’t-”

“I’m serious. You’re always talking about it. But do you ever think about me? You’re not allowed to die. You can’t make me like you and you can’t leave. That’s just not fair. I’m here because I think we have a future.”

“I th-”

“Think whatever you want, but I’m in this now and you’re not allowed to die, so stop acting like you are, stop acting like you have to carpe diem, and just be boring and have regular moments that aren’t tinged with memories that I’ll have to look back on and smile fondly about!”

Chest heaving and shoulders tight, arms outstretched, Clarke stood beside the bed and felt a million pounds lighter. Lexa sighed and pushed herself up a bit.

“Alright. I won’t.”

“Good.”

“Come back now.”

“I can’t. I’m upset.”

“Okay. Want me to show you my boobs?”

As mad as she wanted to stay, the relief that came with finally pouring it out, and the anger couldn’t win against Lexa’s peace and wit. She didn’t want to, but she took a deep breath and smiled, begrudgingly. A tiny one. An almost imperceptible one. She was afraid, perhaps more afraid of death than the girl in the bed. She was more afraid of living.

“This is serious.”

“I know it is,” she shrugged, smile slipping her lips and spreading despite her words.

“Dammit, I mean it, Lexa.”

“I won’t die.”

“You can’t promise that,” Clarke sighed, slumping down in the chair and closing her eyes before dragging her hands over her face. “You can’t.”

Lexa sat in the bed and watched it happen and realized what six months had done to them, what she had allowed to happen in six months. All of the worry and the tired stayed with Clarke through it all, and Lexa had been too angry and too upset to grasp at it. Now she saw the aftermath of her own illness, and as much as Clarke had given her a little zip, given her the motivation to try harder, she realized she was the reason for the exhaustion on the doctor’s face.

“I promise,” she whispered.

From the seat next to the bed, Clarke looked up and balanced her chin on the steeple of her hands. She let it tilt slightly and stared at the girl on the machines, suddenly very afraid.

“I promise,” Lexa said again.

“You can’t promise that.”

“What do you know? You don’t even want to be a doctor,” she smiled. “If you haven’t noticed, I’ve gotten better, and made it this long. For a while I thought I didn’t even need a heart, and then you showed up and now I need one, a better one so I can love you. So yeah, I can promise it. I’ll need at least six hearts to love you as much as you deserve, but I’m a slow learner, so I’ll take just one to try to start.”

As much as she still didn’t want to, Clarke smiled and shook her head. Lexa joked in life and death, and the doctor worked in it, making it impossible to be amusing. But she had to find the kind of peace Lexa had with it. All she could think was that it wasn’t fair she found this girl and could lose her in an instant. It wasn’t fair. So she became a thief and decided to steal every moment she could.

“Take off your shirt,” Clarke rolled her eyes and stood, peeling off her own.

“What?” Lexa muttered, furrowing as a shirtless girl stood before her, wondering what words led to this turn of events, hoping to memorize them like a spell to open the Cave of Wonders. And wonders they were.

“You need warmed,” the doctor explained, helping her out of the sleeves and tugging it above her head. “Skin-to-skin contact is the best way to raise body heat.”

“You just wanted to give me a reason to live, and listen, those are two great reasons.”

“Shut up,” Clarke sighed and crawled into the bed.

Lexa’s body is cold at first, but under the blanket, and pressed together, they warm together, and for a second, Clarke thought she could help. She listens to the quiet heartbeat and counts it, pretending she can keep a record of it.

“Please tell me that when I get a new, healthy heart, we’re going to engage in some strenuous activity.”

“You have no idea,” the doctor promises, closing her eyes and smirking when she earns a low growl.

“Believe me. I have a few,” Lexa sighs in disbelief. “A few.”

* * *

**Day 217**

The low whistle made her jump as she frantically tried to smooth the dress over hips in the mirror. With a snap of her head, she turned to find Finn leaning against the lockers and she huffed before taking a step back and turning to the side.

“Yeah? You think?” she tried. 

“Definitely,” he smiled sadly and crossed his arms as Clarke met his eyes. “You clean up nice, Clarke. Lexa is a lucky patient.”

“She’s not a patient.” 

“We’re going to put a new heart in her at some point, and she comes in regularly.” 

“Is this going to be a lecture?” 

“No. I just wanted to say that she is very lucky. And to be careful.” 

Without a word, her glance changed, and she ignored it, going about grabbing her toothbrush and turning on the water. Finn lingered a little while longer, and with a sigh, pushed himself off of the locker.

“Thanks,” Clarke muttered, toothbrush hanging from her lips. She earned a small smile and nod as he left. 

The weight of it was there, always, but it was heavier to her tired muscles in the moment, and she braced herself on the sink and took a deep breath before meeting her own eyes in the mirror, still needing make up for the date she was nervously prepping for in just a bit.

Two weeks, Lexa had been back at her home and not at the hospital. It was a difficult thing to adjust to, not having her around whenever Clarke had a minute. But it turned to texts and calls. And it turned to Lexa showing up for lunch and getting back to the Lexa that Clarke never knew, but was eagerly enjoying finding more.

“What if we don’t work outside of the hospital?” she muttered after spitting and rinsing when Raven appeared on the bench behind her. 

“You work,” Raven rolled her eyes. “You’ve already seen her a bunch when she’s not a patient.” 

“Not official like this.” 

“I’ve only met her in passing, but that girl has eyes for you in the worst way.” 

The blonde pursed her lips and checked herself over once again.

“I really like her, Raven.” 

It felt like a relief, to admit it, but at the same time, like a secret she was never supposed to say, one of those things we say to just ourselves in the darkest part of the middle of the night when we allow ourselves the time to hope and dream for goodness. To say it aloud to Raven was the realest she could make her feelings.

The truth was, Clarke was alarmingly fond of Lexa. She couldn’t remember a better time than the past six months. She couldn’t remember a relationship in which nothing happened other than talking and making out like horny teenagers. She couldn’t remember anything before it started.

“You’re going to give her a heart attack,” Raven smiled when Clarke finally turned to face her. 

“That’s not funny.” 

“It’s a little funny.”

“She’s not wrong,” Lexa murmured as she stood in the door, hand over her chest, eyes wide and jaw slack. “Holy fu–”

“Does it hurt? What’s wrong?” Clarke’s face changed instantly. 

Raven watched her friend, watched the nervousness disappear to be replaced instantly with relief followed by worry followed by something she could not quite place, but it looked an awful lot like reverence.

“Of course it hurts,” the patient scoffed. “You can’t go looking like that,” she moved her fingers up and down, referencing Clarke and her dress and her and her face and her just… everything. “When you know I have a condition. You’ll kill me right here.”

“Stop scaring me like that. It’s not funny.” 

“Stop looking like… that. You’re damn beautiful.” 

Raven made a gagging noise and stood finally.

“I’ll just leave you two to it then,” she rolled her eyes. “This is all so sweet I’m going to get a cavity. Have her home by eleven. It’s a school night,” she teased Lexa, pretending to be stern. “I worry.”

“Yes ma’am,” Lexa nodded, barely casting a glance as the tech left and gave her friend an exaggerated nod and smile when pointing to the patient before mouthing ‘hot.’

Left suddenly alone, both grew nervous, grew formal.

“I didn’t know if you wanted me to meet you in the lobby, or here. If you’re not ready I can go out–”

“No, no,” Clarke swallowed and shook her head. “I’m ready. I’m. Yeah.” 

“I’m sorry,” Lexa shook her head. “I just…. I’m used to my heart fluttering and not working too well, but this was different. I don’t have a large enough vocabulary to say all the words I want.” 

“Is it too much? I know it’s just dinner and a movie.” 

“No!” she yelped. “No. No. It’s… perfect. But we should get going. I have to get you home by curfew.”

Hand held out, Lexa stood there like a dream, alive and vibrant and grinning, and for a moment, Clarke took a picture, hoping to never forget what she looked like right there and then. And so she took the patient’s hand and let her walk her out of the hospital and out onto what felt like the official start of everything.

* * *

**Day 263**

As weird as it was, Lexa fell into a routine of sorts when she left the hospital. She continued her research and work, she made plans, she found herself exhausted at the end of each day, but she was out of the four walls of the hospital, and that was all she needed to feel alive. That and a certain doctor who made house calls.

“I like when you check my vitals,” Lexa murmured, stretching her neck to reach more of Clarke’s. “I like you in your scrubs, but these jeans. A+.” 

All the doctor could do was chuckle when hands slid around her and grabbed through the jeans after hands slipped up her thighs. Straddling the patient, she wanted nothing more than to go to the bedroom. Hell, she didn’t need the bedroom, right there on the couch would be perfect. But Lexa had rules, wanted to do it properly, with no wires or boxes or battery packs.

“Why are you so good at this?” Clarke groaned in complaint, letting her forehead fall forward in her own frustration. 

Outside, the rain pelted the long glass windows and doors on the side of the house that faced the bay. The view was all grey and overcast despite the fact that it was just the afternoon. It was an afternoon meant for never leaving bed. It was an afternoon for dirty things she could no longer ignore. It was an afternoon to throw her patient down and have wicked ways with her until both their hearts exploded. 

“Good at what?” 

“Making out.” 

The chuckle started in her belly and escaped through her throat, slowly moving up as the words sunk in, making Lexa shake her head. Clarke just huffed a little harder.

“I’m serious. I feel like a damn high school student grinding on you like I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

“Oh, believe me. I’m sure you know what you’re doing.” 

“You’re just so damn good. How? How much practice did you get from other doctors?” 

“None. I hate doctors,” she grinned as Clarke sat back up. “I just like this,” she pulled the doctor’s shirt, “spot.” she whispered as her lips found that section of skin on Clarke’s neck that made her eyes roll back and hips push forward. Lexa grinned victorious when she earned that result. 

“I can’t wait until you get a new heart,” Clarke sighed. 

“Do you think my insurance would sign off on sex as physical therapy?” 

“God, I hope so.” 

With one resigned deep breath, the doctor sat up, still straddling the economist beneath her and smiled at her, pushing some hair behind her ear. She did what she always found herself doing in moments of worry and too many thoughts, she took off Lexa’s glasses and cleaned them for her on the edge of her shirt before placing them back and kissing her forehead.

“You have to go to work,” Lexa remembered. 

“I do. Be good tonight.” 

“You going to be okay?” 

“My girlfriend is the horniest chastity practicing heart patient in the world,” Clarke shrugged and smiled, dismounting. “Who enjoys making me weak in the knees for sport. I’ll survive.”

“Girlfriend?” Lexa swallowed and watched Clarke pause as she grabbed her bag by the door. 

“You know. Or whatever.” 

“I’ll take it.” 

“For someone so smart, you’re very dense,” the doctor rolled her eyes and walked back into the living room. “Girlfriend. You don’t get me in your lap and half-naked in your hospital bed for anything less that that.” 

“Hey, I’m okay with it. Means I can grab your butt whenever I want.” 

“Because that’s what’s stopped you for the past few months.” 

“Good talk. Have a good day at work.” 

“Go to bed. I’ll bring breakfast in the morning.” 

“I’m her girlfriend for twelve seconds and she’s already bossing me around.” 

“Oh, honey, I’ve been bossing you around before that,” Clarke promised, kissing Lexa once more before making her way back to her car. “Now it’s just in an official capacity.” 

Even as the door closed behind Clarke, Lexa remained on the couch grinning to herself before exhaling and letting her head drop back to the edge of the couch with a look of pure peace and victory as she closed her eyes and raised her hands above her head as if she were the heavyweight champ of the world and the entire stadium was chanting her name.

* * *

**Day 299**

There were never enough hours in a day. That was never more obvious to Clarke than when she walked into a surgery one morning and walked out of it in another, and what felt like another year and body completely. When her muscles ached and her brain was fried completely. 

More and more though, when her friend’s hours were eaten away with these surgeries that bled into each other, she found herself passing, avoiding it, almost afraid of the life and death that she came face to face with so readily now that it seemed to weigh more.

The talk was coming any day. Her mother would pull her aside with the best firm face she could muster, and it would be familiar to the doctor, that familiar, almost innate look of disappointment that she bore well through her life. When she was a child, that look made her afraid of failure, made her wary to tell her mother anything at all lest it be flipped and dissected and torn apart to nothing but that look. But this talk, she was steeling herself for, because it would be the ultimate disappointment, and for once, she didn’t care.

She was in no way chasing it or eager for it, but still, she did not feel the profound loss she remembers wearing around like a scarf that was tied too tight like when she was a child at the thought of her mother being ashamed.

“Dr. Griffin, I trust you are ready for this surgery,” the surgeon greeted Clarke as she scrubbed up to her elbows and daydreamed about the breakfast she would get when her girlfriend picked her up in the morning.

“I’ve read all the material and the chart. I’ve been with Mr. Langford for the past few weeks,” she nodded. “When does the transplant team arrive?”

“Should be here any minute. Make sure everything is ready,” he instructed, not looking up. With a sigh she covered her hands and moved into the operating room.

It felt like a punishment, and to a degree, Clarke knew that it was. Her mother gave her this case out of spite, out of a perverted attempt to break her. The heart about to arrive would not fit in Lexa’s chest. If it did, she would not have superseded Mr. Langford due to his LVAD failure. It was as close to allegory as Dr. Abigail Griffin would allow herself, and Clarke felt the sermon on the mount hit its intended target.

Timothy Langford was thirty-six. He had a little boy named Connor who likes to watch construction equipment. His little girl liked to swim. Clarke thought of them outside as they brought him in and began the anesthetizing.

As much as she didn’t want her mother to be right, to force her hand, the moment the heart arrived and she began preparing it, she found her hands shaking. Soon enough, Lexa’s wires and batteries and contraptions would begin to fail her, and her heart would look as deformed and run as terribly as the father’s.

When the ribs were cracked, all Clarke could think about was the way Lexa pushed up her glasses with her finger as she read. And how she had a habit of holding her chest and looking at Clarke like she couldn’t believe her heart was moving that quickly at the sight of her. And the eyes. Those green eyes. And the way she frowned when she read the paper. Or grinned before she sipped her coffee.

It was over before they start. The flatline rang out, dull and doleful and Clarke couldn’t breathe at all. She pulled the mask off and left without a word. It seemed forceful and proud, but it was complete weakness. It became evident when she found the trashcan in the locker room and doubled over, emptying her lunch into it gracelessly.

Even after her body stopped heaving, Clarke gripped the edge of the bin and tried to steady before wiping her mouth. It was too easy for her to picture Lexa on the table in the most tangible way that she’d been able to avoid for other surgeries. And Clarke cursed her mother in so many ways she was boiling into her ears. 

“Hey, you okay?” Raven asked, rubbing her friend’s back, following as she saw her jog down the hall.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” the doctor lied, dragging the back of her hand along her mouth once more after spitting into the trashcan to clear the taste.

“I bet. You seem it.”

“I’m okay,” she insisted, straightening her spine with a resigned sophistication that betrayed her current situation.

“You’re yakking in a trashcan. I don’t think you’re alright.”

“I just watched a heart stop beating. A new one was waiting, beautiful and clean and perfect,” Clarke muttered, shaking her head. She pulled away to tug at the scrub top that was caked with blood at the collar from her efforts.

Half-naked and breathing heavily, Clarke turned on the faucet and ran her hand under it, gulping it, swishing it, spitting it back and running cold water along me be neck as she took another breath. Raven remained standing there, watching it happen.

“And he just died,” Clarke finally shrugged. “The identical surgery that Lexa is going to have one day. Do you know what we have to do?” She didn’t wait for a response. Instead she threw her shirt on a pile and jerked open her locker.

The smile on her face betrayed the worry and the pure fear that now took up residence in her lungs.

“We crack open the ribs. Yank them open, splay them wide. That’s the noise that I hear all the time,” she nodded, digging through her locker. “And we connect bypass so that we can take out the dead heart. And we take a heart that just hours before was beating in another body, that fluttered when someone else entered a room, that ached when someone else remembered the smell of their father’s cologne, and we tie it in and hope it works.”

“Sounds about right.”

“And there’s no reason why it didn’t work today. But it didn’t. And the noise. The flatline noise in a room full of people holding their breath.”

For a moment, she paused. Stopped moving and stared at her hands in the locker as if she were uncertain why she was speaking at all or to who or to the point at which she thought she may have had at some point. With a shake of her head she grabbed her new shirt and pulled it on before struggling to untie her pants. When she grew too agitated she say and concentrated like a kindergartner with laces for the first time.

“I know too much,” Clarke whispered, giving up.

It took an effort, but Raven did all that she could. She kneeled in front of her friend and tried to loosen the knot of her scrubs. As hard as it was to concentrate, she slipped a look at those sad blue eyes and sighed. The tech knew this break was coming, perhaps more than the doctor herself. But knowing and preparing were different beasts entirely.

“It’s going to be okay,” Raven promised. “Sleep it off.”

“Yeah.”

As soon as her pants were undone, Clarke nodded to herself and finished changing. She barely looked at her friend when she grabbed her bag and left.

The feeling of cool air was a godsend and Clarke felt more centered and alive than ever before because it was very real and raw outside. It helped her swirling head that couldn’t settle on a single thought or worry but seemed capable of speaking a million different things in a million different languages.

She gripped the steering wheel and took a breath before yanking at it, before absolutely flailing around and exhausting herself by pummeling the wheel. And when she couldn’t move anymore, she finally started it.

Lexa’s was closer and so due to proximity, Clarke, in the worst mood of her life, drove toward it for no real reason other than habit and conditioning.

There was not a single conscious thought spared to the movements of her body. Instead the surgery repeated in her head. Every step was laid out in textbook detail from the deepest recesses of her torturous memory.

It was not until she was standing in the doorway of a dark house that she realized where she was though she could not remember how.

A light bit of music was what she noticed first. Soft and sweet the little voice hummed and like the Pied Piper she listened and followed, continuing to not think.

The glow of Lexa’s lamp at the desk warmed the space. The window was open and breathing against the curtains while her fingers danced across a keyboard.

Hair pulled up in a bun atop her head, bulky knit sweater around her shoulder, pencil held like a bit in her mouth, she was all focus and too perfect to one day have her ribs mauled. Clarke was so very sorry for them because she loved them. The computer screen burned on the glasses, weighing them down with words so that Lexa had to push them up, balancing them precisely. Clarke loved that.

All at once the surgery was forgotten with the simple push of Lexa’s finger.

She was in love.

“Hi,” Clarke finally squeaked. It came out like a bark, like a cough, unnaturally loud and stiff.

“Hey,” Lexa looked up and smiled. It was the one where her cheeks knew what was coming before her lips and her lips were tugged las the realization happened. “I thought you had that emergency surgery tonight.”

“Cancelled,” she swallowed.

“I’ll take it,” Lexa grinned, sitting back a bit. “How about I finish this and maybe we can watch that movie you wanted?”

“Sounds good. Take your time.”

“Are you okay, Clarke?”

“I am very, very good now,” Clarke nodded.

“Are you–”

Before she could finish, Lexa watched Clarke walk around the large desk and watched her lean forward and kiss her gently, making her cold skin glow with an overexertion of her heart.

“Have you eaten?” Clarke asked, ignoring the kiss.

“Hmm? Oh. Um. No. Yeah. No. I hadn't… I. No,” Lexa swallowed and shook her head. Normally, she had to prepare herself for a kiss like that. Now she hadn’t had the chance. She just got a kiss that would ruin her life.

“Grilled cheese okay?”

“What? Yeah,” Lexa agreed, flustered and distracted. “Sounds great.”

“Okay. Take your time,” Clarke smoothed her hair and kissed the economists temple. “Didn’t mean to distract you.”

“Are you kidding me? Best distraction.”

With a contented sigh, Clarke nodded to herself and walked towards the kitchen, desperately still fighting against what had just occurred an hour ago.

* * *

**Day 314**

Normally, hospitals were not exactly a place Lexa chose to spend any extended amount of time. Because she didn’t choose, didn’t mean she didn’t spend too much time there. Once, she did the math and figured that she’d spent something like sixty-eight percent of her life in a hospital. 

Despite that, there was not much of a comfort that existed whenever she went there. Sitting outside on the bench, Lexa refused to go inside. Not when she was perfectly, or at least, reasonably healthy. It was principle, she ranted to her girlfriend. 

Her book took a back seat to her thoughts though, as the words wouldn’t seem to stay in a straight line. The day was too nice, the spring was too violent and soothing. The trees were waving, lazy and lethargic. The sun was warm and the people were alive. It was too much for someone who spent so much time locked inside the walls of the clean and unnatural hospital. 

It was almost difficult to hate the hospital too much, at the moment, with the air and the sunshine on her skin, being that it currently housed a girl who made her heart feel a little larger, and not in the engorged or dangerous sense, but in the happy to be alive part. 

“You don’t have to come,” Lexa sighed and balanced the phone on her shoulder. “I mean it, Anya.” 

“You’re being ridiculous. I want to come. It’s your birthday.” 

“I don’t want to celebrate.” 

“We always celebrate!” 

There was a sigh that Lexa let out, earning more of her sister’s familiar rant. Anya couldn’t see the eye roll that went with the diatribe. It was the speech about living and enjoying and all of that, the same one she heard every time she refused to go along with her sister’s antics that always led to her giving in just so it could stop. 

“Fine!” Lexa shook her head and growled. 

“Wow, I didn’t even have to use all of the guilt I normally do. Clarke must have you in a good mood.” 

“Shut up.” She smiled despite the annoyed tone. 

“I mean it. You’re actually in a good mood,” the sister continued to tease, suddenly finding herself with more time on her hands due to the delay in her tirade. “I like her–”

Lexa once more shook her head and drifted off. The clicking of certain heels caught her eye and she gulped as she followed them up to the familiar dame on the white coat. Her sister chattered about, and Lexa was suddenly a twelve year old patient who got caught torturing the interns with made up symptoms.

“I have to go. I’ll talk to you later, An.”

“I’m not done mocking you yet.”

“Love you, too,” Lexa offered, meeting Dr. Abigail Griffin’s eyes and suddenly feeling insanely guilty. She hung up and tried her innocent smile. “Dr. Griffin. You look absolutely resplendent today.”

Maybe it was the sitting on the bench part, maybe it was the sun and the trees, but to Lexa, the doctor was suddenly ten feet taller and she was barely breaking two. She could see Clarke’s jaw, see her ears, was mildly grateful that her girlfriend was going to age and look like that. Not a terrible future at all.

“You’re not here for an appointment.”

“No ma’am. Just taking Clarke to lunch.”

“Oh,” Abby nodded slowly before taking a seat beside her patient. “Oh.”

“Traffic wasn’t terrible. I got here a little early, I know. Plus, I was eager. I was downtown at the university talking with a friend about a conference they’re host–”

“I saved your life when you were eight.”

“What?”

“You were eight. I worked on your case as an infant, and then the cardiomyopathy happened quicker than expected, and you were almost dead.”

“I remember.”

Lexa wanted to look at the doctor, but she couldn’t. Instead they faced the hospital together. She wrung her hands and held her breath.

“I gave you one new heart already. I was perfect,” Abby explained. The words came out quick and for the first time that Lexa could remember, the doctor was not stoic or stern. The story came with a pleadingness. “And it lasted you this long. I will find you another, and it will be perfect.”

“Thanks?”

“I saved your life, and I don’t usually keep track of these things, but you owe me.” The patient gulped and looked down at her hands. “Don’t do this to Clarke.”

“I’m not doing anything, I swear.”

“She’s unfocused, she’s unmotivated, she’s unrecognizable, and it’s your fault.”

“I didn’t…” Lexa shook her head and clenched her jaw before looking at the doctor beside her, who she owed her entire life to at the moment.

“Don’t come into her life and then leave, and don’t come in and ruin her.”

“I think you have the wron–”

“I’m asking nicely. I don’t usually ask nicely.”

The breeze didn’t stop, nor did the trees or the birds high above, nor did the sun, nor did the milling of people crowding outside in search of worshipping the large star in the sky that warmed their skin. Her heart beat that steady kind of pump that came with all of her machines. Most of the time her body hurt, and now was no different, though a different feeling of almost anger and remorse overshadowed all else.

From their bench, Lexa looked up just in time to see a familiar hue of blonde scurrying through the hospital. Even from the great distance of outside and the lobby, she knew who it was and smiled, feeling that calm wash over her that was addictive and necessary and new, still.

“I’m in love with her,” Lexa whispered before she cleared her throat. She only then met Abby’s eyes, the smile on her face growing. “I love her. I’m in love with Clarke. And if I only have a few months left on this Earth, I know how I’m going to spend them.”

“I’m losing her.”

“You’re not.”

“I don’t recognize her anymore.”

The guilt of Clarke’s secret hung around Lexa’s throat. Had she not known, she might have considered Abby’s offer. Had she not known Clarke, she would have considered that it was true, that her girlfriend was throwing her life away and loved her job. But the truth was mighty and it gave her strength.

“You’ve known me my entire life. You were at my high school graduation. You can’t think that I am that terrible.”

“It’s not you,” the mother sighed.

At soon as she walked through the doors, Clarke stopped and surveyed the grounds, hoping to find her girlfriend. When she found her she grinned and waved. When she saw her mother beside her she wavered but approached anyway.

“You love her?” Abby asked as she watched her daughter approach.

“With my whole, inflamed, terribly weak heart,” Lexa nodded.

She waited for more words, for more from her doctor and the mother, but nothing came. Lexa was uncertain if she was biting her tongue or just unsure of where to go with the news. Either way, she was still surprised she found the spine to say what she said.

“Hey,” Clarke arrived, and Lexa felt safer. “What are you doing out here, Mom?” 

“Well, when one of my doctors tries to leave early, it’s my job to tut and frown them.”

“I’ve grown immune,” her daughter shook her head. “You ready to go, Lex?”

“It was nice seeing you, Dr. G,” Lexa offered, too seriously, before taking Clarke’s hand.

“Bye, Mom,” Clarke giggled, dragging the economist by the hand, away from the hospital.

From the bench, Abby watched them until they disappeared into the crowd and horizon. With a heavy heart, she shook her head and clenched her teeth together, gnashing them bitterly as she looked back at the hospital, now glimmering in the sunlight.

* * *

**Day 331**

Tomorrow, Clarke told herself as she hugged the pillow in the on-call room, burying her face into it and groaning against the exhaustion. Tomorrow she was going to tell her mother, come hell or high water, that she was leaving the program, because surely another forty hour stretch without sleep was too much and not worth it anymore. 

Her mother’s punishment for her relationship with Lexa was hours and hours and hours and hours of scut. So much trivial dribble followed by her normal work wore her down, made her almost live in the hospital, except for this time around, she didn’t have a lukewarm body in a comfy old sweatshirt to give her naps and share her jello. 

Three weeks of this blistering pace meant almost no time at all with the patient, so her mother was very effective. But canceling yet another date was the final straw. 

So tomorrow it was, she decided as she sighed into the pillow and let her heavy eyelids finally find some peace. Tomorrow, she yawned. Tomorrow she would be free because she just couldn’t do it anymore, she couldn’t waste anymore time not doing what she was meant to do. Unsure of what that was, it didn’t deter her motivation. 

The sleep was deep and hard. The vibrating of her phone did not wake her for a few hours. She slept so hard, she was unable to remember where she fell asleep, eyes blinking in the darkness as they attempted to adjust to the on-call room. 

Twenty missed calls greeted her. The fear gripped her as she knew exactly what the problem was, who it was. Clarke sat up quickly, head swimming, her legs barely worked as she staggered to the door. The light in the hall blinded her, but she held the phone to her ear and dialed anyway. When no one answered, she tried again, looking up and down the hall, trying to decide where to go and what to do. 

Again, the phone rang in her ear as she decided on a direction. Every hall, she ran through, sprinting off of elevators, jogging down stairwells. It wasn’t even that she was out of breath until she suddenly saw what she knew she was looking for, and her phone clanked to the ground. 

“What happened?” 

“Clarke,” her mother warned her, holding her shoulder. 

“What happened?” she yelped, pulling away. 

“I’m fine,” Lexa shook her head and smiled from the bed, adjusting the cannulas wrapping around her ears, providing oxygen. Pale and wired, she tried to look better than she was. “Tell her, Dr. G.” 

“I didn’t get your calls. I was asleep,” the younger doctor explained, still fretting, still half-asleep and oddly wired for the moment. “I’m sorry. You could have– I mean. What? What happened?” her eyes bounced between her mother and the patient. 

“I haven’t been feeling well.” 

“Mom?” 

“We’ve reached the point of diminishing returns.” 

“You haven’t been feeling well?” Clarke snapped back to Lexa.

“Can you believe they gave her a degree?” Lexa asked Abby, smiling fondly as the blonde paced around the bed. 

“Not feeling well is a cold, is a sore throat or a sniffle. This,” Clarke referenced the bed and machines, picked up the heart output paper and gazed over it. “This isn’t just not feeling well. Why didn’t you wake me up?” she accused her mother.

“I’m fine.” Clarke looked back at her mother and waited. 

“The LVAD isn’t working as well as it was, the thickening has grown worse, making her muscles work double. It’s–”

“Not feeling well?” Clarke scoffed again and shook her head, already knowing what it all meant. 

“Can we have a minute, Dr. G?” Lexa asked, adjusting her sheet, fiddling with anything she could. 

As much as she wanted to keep ranting, Clarke met Lexa’s eyes and understood. She waited until her mother left, until the door clicked shut. Her muscles clenched and her eyes felt sore, but still, she crossed her arms over her chest and looked away from the bed. 

The quiet permeated the through the room. It was artificial and different, and suddenly life caught up despite their best efforts to spend the past few months on the lam. 

“I’m fine,” Lexa insisted. 

“Lean back,” the doctor furrowed and ignored the words, tugging the stethoscope from her pocket. 

“I always liked you in those scrubs. My favorite. You know, I first checked you out when you were wearing scrubs.” 

“Shh.” Clarke warmed the end on her sleeve and tugged on Lexa’s gown before placing it on her chest. 

“I mean it. You were asleep in my room, and when you woke up, you went to get my chart and I totally checked you out. Most of the time, scrubs aren’t forgiving, but you look real good. Not as good as those jeans I like, but still–”

“Shh!”

“And that just woken up thing,” Lexa ignored the hands on her and the way her girlfriend frowned and moved around. 

“Sit up.” 

“You just look so beautiful,” the patient explained. “Even when you’re mad at me.” 

The words made her calm, despite her own need to stay angry. Clarke closed her eyes and listened as hard as she could, knowing exactly what was already happening. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t feeling well?” 

“I tried. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want… this… us. To end, you know?” 

“Not feeling well,” Clarke shook her head, taking the scope from her ears. 

“Hey, come here,” the patient tugged on the scrubs. Clarke refused. 

The hospital buzzed just outside the door. Clarke couldn’t remember the last time she left and saw the outside world, and suddenly she knew that it would be a long wait again until she got there again. Deep down, she knew that Lexa was in now until she got a new heart, or until she didn’t. Either way, home was done. No more breakfasts at the donut shop down the block. No more movies at the old theater across town. No more nights in the park. 

Lexa played with the bottom of Clarke’s shirt, ran her thumb along it there. 

“Want to check my vitals again? You know I love when you do that.” 

“This is serious.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“You do know I’m a doctor right?” 

“Come here.”

Outside the room, the hospital murmured along. Abby watched from the window as her daughter sighed and looked as if she were ready to cry, though she wouldn’t allow herself. Instead, Clarke sat down on the edge and leaned forward, her forehead resting on Lexa’s. The patient clutched at her scrub top and kept her rooted there. Abby watched Lexa talk, as both of their eyes closed, and though it felt too intimate she couldn’t look away.

* * *

**Day 342**

The candlelight glowed on Lexa’s face, gold and soft and fake. The single, battery-powered fake flame flickered in the middle of the cake and Lexa smiled to herself as her sister and girlfriend and handful of friends sang her the song and when it ended, she closed her eyes and focused on a singular wish before pretending to blow it out. 

The party was a small affair, and her sister doted, gave her gifts, decorated the room as best she could. More than half of her birthdays had been in similar beds in similar rooms. This was the last one, she vowed. Never again would she be in a hospital for her birthday. 

By the time everyone cleared out, Lexa was exhausted, but still, she kept up the front, hid the crankiness her sister accused her of having. Tomorrow she would be sassy and complain and try to find a bright side of a failing heart and the dwindling supply. Tonight, she let herself pretend. 

“Not a terrible birthday haul,” Clarke observed, moving a bag from the table to the chair. “Your sister puts on a good party.” 

“She does.”

“Are you going to tell me what you wished for?” 

“You know already.” 

“I have an idea,” Clarke grinned and turned out the large light that bathed them in fake light and let the warm lamp act as the only source they needed. “Which is why I made the standard wish for the whole new heart thing.” 

“What a waste.” 

“I got you something else, you know. I suppose I can help out with your wish.” 

Lexa gulped slightly as her girlfriend approached the bed. If she’d been hooked up to the monitor with sound, the entire ward would have heard the way her heart skipped even more abnormally than what was customary.

“Please let my wish come true,” Lexa begged the sky. “Just one.” 

“I’m not going to show you one boob.” 

“Both. Thank God. Both.” 

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Clarke shook her head and looked over her shoulder at the closed blinds and locked door. With a resigned sigh she looked at Lexa’s excited face one more time and groaned. “Here,” she groaned, lifting her shirt and bra. 

“Best. Birthday. Ever.” 

For a few more seconds, Lexa just stared and felt her mouth go dry, this time not related to the medication she was currently taking. If there were any motivation to stay alive, nothing would work as well as the hope of one day touching Clarke’s boobs. 

“There. Now stop asking.” 

“I don’t know how you thought that would make me ask less,” Lexa shook her head, eyes still wide from the display. “Now I know and now I want to see them more.” 

“Hush,” Clarke chuckled and rolled her eyes. 

“Seriously. When I get better, I’m mandating that my house is a shirt free zone. Shirt and shoes off at the door.” 

“Okay.”

“Why do you not walk around topless?”

“Lex.” 

“Ninth wonder of the modern world right there.” 

These were the moments Clarke fell in love. When Lexa was on a tangent and incredibly honest and charming. She slipped off her shoes and nudged her chin as she continued to prattle on about her boobs before sliding into the small bed beside her, oddly tired after the long day of party planning with Anya. 

The new sweater was cozy and lacking in the smell that the old one had, but still, Clarke rooted her nose in it as she made herself comfortable. She had smiled when Lexa immediately took off her old one and put on Clarke’s gift. Little did she know, it was the whole picture of it, the geeky professor look, that really did it for her, and thus her ulterior motive. She would say it was to keep her warm, but the doctor knew the truth and kept it like a secret.

“Was it a good birthday?”

“My doctor just flashed me, so yeah. This is every dirty dream I ever had come to fruition,” Lexa decided. Her hand moved automatically to Clarke’s hip where it held protectively, cold fingers burrowing under the edge of her shirt.

“I’m not your doctor anymore.”

“In my dirty dreams you are.”

“I can’t wait til you get a new heart,” Clarke sighed. “I want birthday sex.”

“You?” Lexa guffawed, “How about me? Hot blonde hanging all over me. I can’t wait.”

“What did you wish for, really?”

“Exactly what you showed me.”

With a hum, Lexa stretched and closed her eyes, letting the gentle fingertips play with her chest. Weak as she was, she tried to stay awake.

“I’m being serious. You had your eyes closed for a while.”

“If I tell you, it won’t come true.”

“That’s true.”

“My dad would always ask me how the past year had been. Birthdays were always his beginning of fresh years. Way better than when everyone started on January first.”

“Well?” With a small movement, Clarke kissed Lexa’s shoulder, moved slightly and kissed her jaw. Her palm pressed warmly on her chest. “How was this trip around the sun?”

“The best one yet,” the patient smiled and settled into the pillows. She let Clarke kiss her cheek. Let her play with her hair. “You made it great.”

“Good. But what do you want for the next one to make it even better?”

“I had a dream a few weeks ago.”

“Tell me about it,” Clarke yawned, inserting her nose into Lexa’s neck. Eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks and made her smile wider.

“I dropped my bag on the floor, and it was raining. I was soaked. I just remember all the rain the most. And you were there and debating what color the kitchen should be painted.”

“Was I dressed?”

“It wasn’t a dirty dream.”

“Don’t be offended. It’s a reasonable question.”

“Fair.”

“What do you want to do this year?”

“Conquer the world.”

“I’m being serious,” Clarke whispered.

“Realistically, take the whole failing heart thing out of it?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d love to finish my PhD. I started it four times already and could never finish.”

“See, you want to be a doctor and I want to stop.”

“That should be your goal for the year.”

“It is.”

“What else?” Lexa murmured, kissing her forehead.

Sleep called them both. Uncomfortable and squashed as they were in the hospital bed, Clarke was convinced that even in a king-sized one, they would take up the same amount of space after the past few months of training. There hadn’t been important talks. There’d been talks about the best ice cream flavor, and the worst jello. There’d been debates about intense topics like the federal reserve and Sandra Bullock movies. There were jokes and support and quiet, but there was never the talk about the future. Both were afraid of the topic and the idea of it, or worse, allowing themselves hope.

“I want to move in with you. Maybe take a trip somewhere warm. And I want to just keep being us, if that’s alright.”

“Yeah. I like that.” Suddenly awake, Lexa was confronted with the future, and enjoyed it. She was alive with possibility and she was burdened by the lightness of hope. “Maybe Costa Rica.”

“Yeah, or Australia.”

“Hawaii.”

“Thailand.”

“Bali.”

“Bali,” Clarke agreed, yawning again. “We’ll go there.”

“For my birthday next year, we’ll celebrate on a beach,” Lexa decided.

“For Christmas, we’ll get a big tree in your house. Lots of lights. Brightest in the neighborhood.”

“What about Halloween?”

“Monster movies and handing out candy, obviously.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” the patient grinned.

“Busy year coming up, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Almost asleep, Clarke sighed and loosened her grip, succumbing to Lexa’s palm moving along her back.

“I better get better then,” Lexa decided.

* * *

**Day 356**

The tests proved that Lexa was dwindling quickly. That fact kept Clarke awake for days on end with naps that were blinks and forced upon her by her patient. Fried and exhausted, she struggled to function. Her girlfriend watched her cheeks grow thinner and her skin a bit paler. The worry wore her to the bone. 

“You look very cute today,” Lexa sat up a bit and rested her book in her lap. 

“I do,” Clarke agreed quite seriously as she put down a fresh cup of coffee on the table. “Do you know why?” 

“To torture me because I’m permanently stuck in this hell of a body that won’t let me toss you against a wall and do delectable things to you?” 

“Close,” she chuckled and leaned to kiss her softly. “One year ago, I ran a code on a heart patient.” Lexa’s eyes grew a little wider before her cheeks perked and made them squint with the happiness. “What a year.” 

“Only a year. It feels so much longer.” 

“I agree.” 

“Are you going to be late for work?” Lexa ventured after a few more minutes of the slow welcome of lips. 

“I am.” 

“Go on then. I’ll make us some plans to celebrate.” 

“Nope. I’ve already got it taken care of, but you relax and try to stay alive another day, okay?” 

“That joke will get old some day,” the patient rolled her eyes and picked up her book again before earning another kiss. 

“Not yet,” Clarke decided. “Drink your coffee and be nice to the interns.” 

“Get out of here, tease.” 

The plans were made. Shift was covered. Food was ordered. It wasn’t much, but it was the least she could do. 

Suddenly, with Lexa, everything just seemed like it needed celebrated. Maybe it was the test results and the non-shrinking list ahead of her. Maybe it was that after the birthday, Clarke really was ready to start a new year, and even if it wasn’t her own, she was ready to begin anew at any hint of an excuse. 

The day was a blur. Nothing important, nothing vital. While the rest of the class worried and fret over offers and interviews, Clarke avoided all thought of such things, secretly hoping she could just disappear completely. That would be easiest, though her mother would never let it happen. 

Just as she showered and put on the dress she’d picked out for the date, her pager rang and Clarke ignored it as best she could until it went off again. 

Heels on, she still sprinted down the hall toward Lexa’s room, entering into the chaos of it all as the paddles were placed on her chest. Her mouth didn’t form words, and like a sick show, she just stared, unable to change the channel. 

“Clarke, let them work,” her mother scolded as she put her hair up and tried to move around the bed. 

“Is this like a yearly thing?” Clarke complained, fretting suddenly. “What happened?” 

“We’re not sure.” 

The brakes of the bed clicked as they began to move it. Clarke watched it all happen and still didn’t know what to do. She wrapped her arms around herself and bit her lip as everyone disappeared. 

It was a gross form of abuse, but still she managed to get to the gallery to watch. She watched them cut and she saw organs and she held her breath. Six hours later, Lexa was asleep in her room with a new scar and new LVAD wire, and Clarke refused to move from her seat. The nurses flipped the operating room and she watched through glazed over eyes, not seeing anything. 

“It was just a malfunctioning pack,” Abby offered as she stood in the doorway. Her daughter didn’t move at all, didn’t flinch, just stared through the theatre window at the empty room below. “She’ll be waking up soon.” 

Quietly, Clarke flexed her jaw and bit her lip. She wiped her cheek and took a deep breath while her mother wrung her hands and took off the scrub cap. 

All was calm now, where just before, the chaos had saved an entire life. If she could have, Clarke would have turned back time and never met Lexa. It would have been as simple as not getting that coffee with Raven, or not getting off on the wrong floor, or ignoring a code. Nothing would have happened. 

Except she didn’t believe that. If she wouldn’t have gotten the coffee or run that code, she would have met Lexa. Something in her, in the great string of the universe hummed out that note that she would have heard at some point. And she hated it. 

“This is going to happen more. It’s going to get worse,” Abby ventured, attempting to help ease her daughter into it. 

Clarke didn’t say anything at all. She just sat back slightly and furrowed harder, the exhaustion and the muscles hurting as they unclenched in her body. 

“You know it is going to get worse before it gets better.” 

“I have to go.” 

With all of the effort she could, the doctor pushed herself up and stood, wobbling slightly. 

“You need to take a step back, Clarke.” 

“I can’t.”

“You’re a surgeon.”

“No I’m not.” 

“Yes you are,” her mother argued. 

“No, I’m really not,” she shook her head and smiled despite it. Perhaps it was the honesty. 

“Don’t do this. You’re upset. Think like a doctor.” 

There was a pause before the cracking of air of the storm that erupted between them, sudden and violent as if it were coming fresh off the sea itself. 

“I know what it feels like!” Clarke yelled, trying so desperately to get her mother’s true and honest, undivided and complete attention. “I know what it is like to sit in a little room with the most generic wall paper that torturously does not line up just right at the seams, where the coffee is constantly brewed at lukewarm and the glances are pity and this almost bitterness, as if your good news takes away from someone else’s until you find yourself angry at them for possibly surviving without feeling as if their own hearts weren’t breaking.”

“Clarke, there’s no–”

“No! You don’t understand!” her daughter yelled again, a new kind of rage burning in her eyes. Rage that only betrayed a certain type of fear that was innate and holy. “I can’t open someone up and not be paralyzed by possibly taking away their person. I am the girl in the waiting room. That’s who I am now.”

“You are a Griffin, the fifth gener–”

“I’m not!”

“Clarke!”

“I don’t want it. I never have, and I can’t fake it.”

“This girl has you–”

“She does,” Clarke finally confessed with a shrug. “She has me head over heels. But I know exactly what kind of terrors we inflict upon the human body in the hope of keeping it alive, without seeing the cost of it. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to either.”

Her mother grabbed the handle to the gallery door and held it open waiting for her daughter to take the hint and leave. All words were gone from her, her own heart broken completely at the news. She could not show it though. Instead she just waited.

“You can leave your badge at the nurses station. Your credentials are no good here any longer.” 

Clarke just nodded and breezed past her quickly. 

Day 369

“Today’s the day,” Clarke decided, dropping the bag of breakfast on the little table. 

Without thinking about it, she leaned forward and kissed the girl in the bed who pushed up her glasses and put her finger on a word to mark her place. Lexa didn’t bother arguing, instead she just took the coffee. 

“Today my mom walked past me like I was invisible, but still. I can feel it. It’s going to be a good day.” 

“You realize that for me to get a heart, someone has to die, right?” 

“Yeah, but I’m not a doctor anymore, so I don’t have to think about that.”

“As long as your morals remain after your quitting.” 

“You know me. Unwavering.” 

And so the routine began. It was easy and it was calm. Mornings in the hospital and after lunch, Clarke went to work and never felt better. The florist was small, was quiet, and she got to use her hands. It wasn’t much, but people didn’t die, and she didn’t have to miss any sleep. 

She expected she would have missed the pace, the career, but she didn’t miss one thing. 

“Do you have everything you need?” Clarke asked as she stood up after their morning meeting. 

Lexa tugged her girlfriend’s shirt and kissed her harder. She loved the morning affirmation, she loved her hope, she loved her drive, she craved her happiness. The thunder rumbled outside. 

Her day in the hospital was boring, though she made the best of it, getting ahead on reading, making notes, following the rubric of her old PhD program, as if it would matter, as if all the words she read would be useful one day. Clarke insisted that it was good that she did not let herself fall behind. Lexa worked hard for her. 

“More tests than usual today,” Lexa observed as one of the interns hovered. She let him take more blood after lunch. She just got a nod. 

Raven usually stopped by after lunch, on order from her friend to check on the patient. She often held her breath when she walked towards the room, because the tech was convinced that it would be just her luck to have to tell her friend that the love of her life was dead. But still, she went, and cultivated an almost relationship with the economist who gave her investment advice. 

“This place is busy today,” Raven muttered, moving out of the way as people hovered and pushed toward the bed. 

“Dying is busy work.” 

“Your jokes are terrible.” 

“I have to get them all out before Clarke comes around. She hates them, but they keep me sane.” 

“Solid choice. Hey–” the tech tugged her shoulder away as another intern scurried around. “Seriously. This is ridiculous.” 

“I’m the one getting prodded.” 

When she left, Raven made sure to send a little text to her friend, telling her everything was still aright. And that was the routine of the day. It was perfect and it ran smoothly. 

By the time Clarke made her way back to the hospital, Lexa was brimming with news. Her mother nods at her once again, already prepared for the surgery and on her way to collect the donor heart. 

“I told you today was the day,” Clarke smiled widely, kissing the patient’s face all over where she could reach. “Didn’t I tell you?” 

“You did.” 

“We get to start today. This is amazing.” 

“You’re crying,” Lexa observed, running her thumb along her cheek. Clarke hadn’t even noticed it at all. 

The team continued to prepare her, but Clarke didn’t notice at all. She just sniffled and realized that Lexa was right. She didn’t move to stop it or to clean up. Instead she just kissed her again and closed her eyes and held her breath. 

“I love you so much,” she whispered, shaking her head slightly. 

“Don’t get too sentimental on me, Griffin.” 

“Shut up.” 

“Is that you you speak to someone who is going into surgery?” 

“I’m so happy. You better not die.” 

“I would dare.” 

Together amidst the dizzying dance of prep, they were alone together. Clarke leaned her lips close to Lexa’s, dragged it long and out, kissing her as if it could save her, as if it could hold the years and decades worth of words that she wanted to speak. 

Instead, Clarke ran her fingertips along Lexa’s neck and ran her nose along Lexa’s, laughing slightly.

* * *

**Day 370**

Freezing cold, the waiting room is impossible to control. Clarke paced through it like a lion at the circus, running its protruding ribs against the cage bars, hungry and afraid and so very much out of its elements, huffing and puffing in that fake kind of bravado that was innate to its survival.

“It’s cold in here,” Raven brr’s, crossing her arms and bunching herself up against the frigid temperature.

Clarke doesn’t indicate that she’s noticed at all. Instead, she just paces a bit more, rubbernecking every time she passes the door and tries to see scrubs coming down the hall with an update. When she stopped, she made herself sit only to stand again, followed once more by forced tranquility, and again by nervous pacing.

“Not enjoying this side of those double doors, huh?” Anya teased, anxiously flipping through a magazine which she tossed to the side a second later, disinterested in pretending much longer.

“Right now they are putting her on bypass, preparing to remove her heart.”

“Seriously, how are you two not freezing?”

“You don’t have to stay. It’s going to be a long surgery,” Clarke offered, ignoring her friend’s words.

“I’m here.”

“I know she’s going to be alright.”

“She is,” Anya promised.

“I know it. I just don’t like this.”

“No one likes waiting,” Raven promised.

“It’s freezing,” Clarke shook her head, pacing once more, wrapping herself in Lexa’s old sweatshirt. When she made it as far as the room would allow, she dipped her nose into her shoulder and inhaled graciously.

For a moment, at the apex of her pace, she paused and closed her eyes and tried to forget the smell of the soldering of vessels that now seemed to follow her as she tried not to picture the surgery.

“Hey,” Finn stuck his head in quickly, and the inhabitants stood and ran towards him. “We got her switched to bypass. I just wanted to check in and let you know that everything is going routine.”

“Thanks,” Anya nodded to him and smile. He gave Clarke a pitiful glance before leaving once more. The blonde pursed her lips and ran her hand along her cold nose.

The excitement of news felt like lactic acid, eating away at her muscles. It was standard and provided no real insight, but still, the few words were enough to make her feel like her skin was ready to fall off and her muscles were burning from the inside out.

“I’m going to call Mom and give her an update,” Anya decided, fiddling with her phone.

She waited until Clarke acknowledged before excusing herself to the welcoming humidity of the hall and eventually outside. The air in the waiting room was stale and old, stagnant and recycled to a degree that it almost felt as if it were produced.

“It’s really cold in here,” Clarke said again.

“I can go get some coffee or tea. Maybe tea. You don’t need anymore coffee.”

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“Yeah, I can see that,” Raven teased.

“It’s freezing.”

“Yeah.”

“My fingers are going to fall off. “

“She’s going to be alright, you know that right?”

“Yeah,” Clarke lied again, nodding and shoving her hands in her pockets.

To her friend, she looked so young suddenly despite the way the day hung on her eyelids, tugging them down with bags and fear. Raven realized how invested she, herself, had become in her friends happiness, in this relationship in general in that moment. When Clarke kept nodding and looked away, staring at the wall with fixed disinterest, she realized how deep it went.

“You love her, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” she whispered this time.

“How?”

“I’m not sure. It just kind of happened.”

“You gave up your job for her–”

“I didn’t,” Clarke interrupted, once again wrapping herself up protectively. It was winter in that waiting room and she was unprepared. “She gave me the courage to quit. A reason, maybe. She just wanted to see me happy.”

“Still, that’s huge.”

“It was, but it wasn’t that. It was…” she finally met her friend’s eyes. “There were a thousand tiny moments that kept adding up.” With a shrug she leaned her head back and smiled. “It happened slowly. A little moment, like adding a dime or a nickel to your piggy bank, and the next thing you know, you have a lot.”

“And then you broke it open and realized you were too far gone.”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“She’s going to be alright,” Raven promised again, not sure why she was making it. She had no proof, and she had no assurances that the words weren’t a lie, but still she tried because it almost made herself believe it .

“I’m going to start my life with her,” Clarke decided.

“You guys are so gross.”

For the first time that day, Clarke laughed. Her eyes watered slightly because she was exhausted and it was freezing, but she wiped it away and smiled with her friend before holding her hand and resting her head on her shoulder.

* * *

**Day 371**

The familiar tightness in her chest welcomed the waking patient. She licked her lips or at least tried to fight the dryness that came with the drips and medications, the sour taste of chemicals pulsating through her body in equal measure with her blood. Even before she opened her eyes, she heard the sound of home, or the same kind of home she knew since she was born. The faint electric hum of the machines, the whir of the breathing machine, the scratch of the needle that drew out her heartbeats.

Still night, she saw the familiar vase of flowers courtesy of her mother against a far wall. The room was so similar to all of the others, there was almost a universality to it that was surreal and at the same time both comforting and jarring, like a sick game of deja vu.

The only distinct difference in this room was the blonde currently curled up asleep on the chair beside the bed, hands and shoulders hunched beneath her sweatshirt. Lexa furrowed and cleared her throat once before slowly closing her eyes, wondering if she was higher than normal. If she opened her eyes again, maybe she’d be gone. It would have been a dream.

But when she opened them again, she smiled to herself, because it hadn’t been a dream, and all of it was true, and she was alive; the surgery was finished and seemed to be a success. The realization hit her and she raised her hand to place her palm against her sore chest. She could feel her heart beating without it, but it the pressure helped reassure her.

A few minutes after just sitting there and listening to the thumping in her ears, the door opened and a doctor approached.

“How are you feeling?” Abby asked, checking the monitors.

“Sore,” Lexa rasped. “It worked?”

“It worked,” she nodded, smiling as well. “You are the proud owner of a lightly used, very healthy heart. Please do not ruin it.”

“That’s up to her,” she smiled, nudging her head at the sleeping girl. “Thank you so much.”

“Just take care, okay? I did good work.”

“I owe you one.”

“Take care of her, too,” Abby sighed, allowing herself one look at her daughter before the regret and bitterness threatened to destroy her. She was a strong woman, but only so strong.

“I’ll do my best.”

It felt final, and Lexa knew it. There was much more to their story, but this was the end of something, which was very welcomed to everyone involved. The patient saw the sadness in the mother’s eyes and nodded as she dismissed it.

With another striking nod, she left and Lexa remained lying there, listening to her new heart beat. It didn’t feel real, she felt like a dream.

“Hey,” Clarke rasped, swallowing sleep slightly and rubbing her cheek. She blinked against the light and yawned. “You’re awake.”

“I wanted to let you sleep.”

“You did great in there,” she shook her head and stood, kissing Lexa sweetly. The former doctor breathed a sigh of relief. Her lips moved to the patient’s cheeks and forehead and nose, slowly, reverently. “Let’s not do this again.”

“Agreed,” Lexa chuckled. “Come here,” she held Clarke’s hand and placed it on her chest. “Feels strong, doesn’t it?”

“Very strong.”

“This is the happiest day of my life and the saddest day of someone else’s,” she swallowed.

“We can thank them.”

“Okay,” she nodded, swallowing against the scratchiness of her sore throat. “Be here when I wake up?”

“Of course.”

“You said you loved me before surgery.”

“I did,” Clarke nodded, taking her seat. She kissed Lexa’s knuckles, holding them gently as the patient closed her eyes and smiled.

“I thought I dreamed it.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Will you tell Anya–”

“She’s going to be back in the morning.”

“Thanks.”

“Sleep. You need your rest.”

“This means we get to have some strenuous activity, you know that right?” Lexa asked, turning her head toward the girl in the chair.

“In a few months.”

“Just you wait.”

* * *

**Day 616**

The rain didn’t care about the grumbling of the city beneath it. It didn’t stop and it didn’t begrudge, it simply was, and always would be. Streetlights blurred and smudged in Van Goghian ways until the world was a painting, was the starry night over the Rhone.

Cars slid through it, sloshing and slipping, slithering along slick streets with streaks of light and spots of glimmering stars reflected on the windshield. Languidly, the morning yawned, the streets smacked their gutter lips and drank up the puddles like coffee and smoke slipped up through vents as the subway was a cigarette, drawn out, inhaled and exhaled through the arteries of the living world.

Life began despite the rain. People were poured atop, gutters pummeled drains and newspapers were ineffective umbrellas to unsuspecting pedestrians. The grey of the sky was the color of the weather, effective in providing enough light to make the clouds glow.

All the while, the couple in the bed slept along. The rain kept going, the streets kept sloshing, the stores started to open, the clock ticked, the world turned, and they slept without one iota of notice.

As she woke, Clarke yawned and grabbed the shirt of the girl in the bed. Her cheek rubbed against the spot of exposed skin that peered through the torn spot by the collar. Her eyes fought against waking, and so she kept them closed as consciousness crept into her bones. As if by magic, as if by an innate genetic need, her hand rested on the pink scar on her lover’s chest where a heart pounded mightily beneath the rib cage. 

The alarm clock beeped, interrupting the quiet and warmth, earning dual groans of complaint. Lexa yawned as her girlfriend leaned over her to shut off the offensive noise, but she didn’t make it easy, instead grabbing her waist and holding there. 

“No work,” Lexa complained. 

“Work soon,” Clarke confessed. 

Lexa didn’t care. She was tired and her eyes still hurt now for all of the reading she’d been doing. Nothing was going to stop her from getting the feeling of Clarke’s body pressed against her own. The girl settled atop her and she let her hands slip under the shirt and run up her back. 

“Five more minutes,” Clarke purred, settling into her neck. Lazily, her lips moved and ran against her neck. 

“Keep kissing my neck and we’ll be having another round of PT right here.” 

The body atop her chuckled but didn’t stop with the kissing along her pulse. In fact, it got worse, and hips moved subtly against her own. Lexa gripped her, slipped her hands down into sweatpants and held. 

“Stop putting sex on your workout worksheet.” 

“I’m supposed to document my cardio.” 

Lips lethargically lingered, laboring along the landscape of ligaments and skin. Lazily, she nudged jaw with her nose and shifted until she was straddling the girl in her bed. 

“You just like to brag,” Clarke decided. 

“I do.” 

Just as her palms grabbed and moved around the sweatpants, the snooze went off on the alarm and Clarke shook her head, sitting up slightly. 

“I have work. You have class.” 

“I have to work out,” Lexa shrugged, kissing her girlfriend, tugging at her shirt and finding chest. 

“Go for a run. I am going to be late.” 

With a shake of her head, Clarke got off of the bed. It was the most usual of usual mornings, so routine and them. The light crept through the blinds. The rain pecked at the window pane. 

Lexa sat up in bed, watching a shirt be thrown into a hamper as the light to the bathroom illuminated naked skin. The water clicked, and with just her old sweats rolled on hips, Clarke pulled up her hair in the mirror, topless and exquisite. The patient smiled and watched until her girlfriend turned to her. 

“Come on, then. You’re like a puppy waiting for a treat. Let’s conserve water.” 

“If this heart wasn’t used and barely mine, I’d give it to you in a minute,” Lexa mused, tossing off the sheets and letting her shirt follow suit a second later. 

“Whatever. It’s mine,” Clarke shrugged nonchalantly as she climbed into the steaming water. “We all know it.” 

Lexa joined her a second later, scooping her up as best she could and sneaking in a little strenuous activity before their days began.


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 72**

“Fit as a fiddle,” Lexa boasted as she climbed onto the table. “Healthy as a horse.”

“Let the doctor talk,” Clarke chided.

“Tell her, Dr. G,” she continued, all bravado and pride and life twisting around in her muscles and veins.

“Let me get started,” the doctor rolled her eyes.

Nearly two years exactly since Clarke walked into a code, and she still wasn’t used to Lexa half of the time. She could never fully anticipate her thoughts or her urges or the way her brain worked, and for that she was almost grateful. Every day was an adventure, every day was extra, borrowed time, and each moment was savored. For seventy-two days, she had a new heart, and she felt every single day anew, a gift, with the girl that made each one worth it.

Clarke sat in the chair and watched her mother close her eyes and listen to Lexa’s heart through the stethoscope. Her girlfriend gave her a wink and took a deep breath.

While they connected her to the monitor, she made small talk with her girlfriend’s mother, telling her about school and her plan to train for a marathon and getting under a 15 minute mile eventually. With lots of vigorous activity.

There were still hiccups. There were still little things that set them back. Something about going through what they did, right from the gate, though, that made fighting over what was for dinner or someone being a little sour during brunch with friends seem stupid.

“I haven’t missed a day or dose of pills,” The patient shook her head, sitting up after the printouts were made. “I take my vitamins, the kind that aren’t even chewable or shaped like cartoon characters, and I do that meditation thing.”

“Is she telling the truth?” her mother asked, ignoring the patient.

“Who do you think makes me?” Lexa snorted as she started to button her shirt. “I think she mashes some extra and puts them in my food. I don’t know what and I don’t have proof–”

“She takes all of them,” Clarke stopped the tirade. “Exercises every day. Eats healthier than I do.”

“It’s just miraculous,” Dr. Griffin shook her head and took a seat on the stool. “Your numbers are great. Better than I’ve seen before. Let me go see how the blood tests are going, and we’ll get you out of here, okay?”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Yeah, Thanks, Mom,” Lexa smiled wider than needed.

To her credit, the doctor thought of something, before closing her mouth, shaking her head, and making her way out into the hall. She chided herself for allowing the soft spot she had for the patient to grow, even after the difficult time she had with her daughter. It was almost frustrating for someone to be so likeable.

“You know what this means, right?”

“If your blood tests are good,” Clarke reminded her girlfriend. “And if the doctor gives you the okay.”

“They’re going to be good,” she promised, gazing down at her fingers to match the button to the hole. “And then it’s going to be you. And me. And a beach somewhere we can’t pronounce drinking drinks we can’t pronounce and spending the nights wrapped up under some mosquito netting and little else.”

“You really paint a picture.”

“I had many, many days in a hospital bed to imagine these types of things.”

“I don’t know why I was so nervous about this,” Clarke confessed, standing up and settling between Lexa’s legs as she finished buttoning her shirt for her. “I’ve been there every day, and I know you’re fine. It’s just… I’m programmed for the worst.”

“Hey, you stuck it out with me through the not fun parts,” Lexa promised, her hands settling on her girlfriend’s hips. “I think we deserve some good. Both of us. We get to start, for real, and I’m so excited.”

“I don’t think anyone ever deserves good. The universe doesn’t give a rat’s ass.”

“As someone who has died at least three times in their life, I want to remind you that I’m quite certain the universe is just the ultimate comedian, and I’m quite fond of her sense of humor.”

Clarke rolled her eyes and fixed the already pristine shirt before grabbing the sweater from the chair and helping Lexa slip it over her head. She didn’t have to help, but there was just something about putting her back together, about making her Lexa again, that just helped Clarke’s head remember that she was allowed to be in love and very happy.

“We’re going to have sex.”

“Lexa, stop!”

“Like, good sex,” she continued. “Hot, good, earth-shattering sex.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Eventually. I mean. I’m a bit rusty.”

“Wow, that confidence disappeared quickly,” Clarke taunted, watching the implications seep into Lexa’s thoughts.

“It’s still going to be spectacular. Just you wait.”

“I bet.”

“I haven’t had sex in a while. You might kill me.”

“That’s not a funny joke,” the former doctor complained, rolling her eyes.

“I want to hear a joke,” Dr. Griffin decided, as she made her way back into the exam room. Her daughter cocked her head toward her girlfriend and waited.

“Did you ever hear the one about how easy it is to make holy water?” Lexa said, not missing a beat.

It infuriated Clarke that her mind worked liked that, that she could just do things with words and suddenly end up somewhere else. It was magic. And it was damn infuriating to watch it happen and her never get caught looking stupid.

“I don’t think I have,” her mother shook her head.

“Yeah, all you have to do is boil the hell out of it.”

“Well, I like that one,” Abby laughed despite herself, not seeing it coming. Clarke just rolled her eyes as Lexa looked at her cockily.

“So come on, Dr. G. Give me the news,” Lexa breathed. “Before you do, I do have a crisp Benjamin Franklin that could be left on the floor having fallen out of my pocket, if it’s the news I’m looking for.”

“Has that ever worked?”

“No.”

“Your tests look fine,” the doctor shook her head, reading over a few pages, flipping another. “Blood tests are strong, your stress test came back excellent. I see no reason why we can’t continue with your plan and prescribe harder workouts and maybe long–”

“Alright, thanks, Dr. Griffin,” Lexa decided, hopping up from the bed. “See you in three weeks for the next appointment.”

She made it down the hall, leaving Clarke and her mother staring at each other in her sudden departures.

“Clarke! Let’s go! Strenuous Activity!” she yelled from down the hall.

“Do I want to know?” Abby asked her daughter who stood and blushed before sheepishly inching toward the door, just as eager as the patient.

“No, you really don’t. Bye, Mom,” Clarke offered, disappearing just as quick, hot on her girlfriend’s heels.

* * *

**Day 73**

The candles might have been a bit much, but Lexa didn’t care. Her heart was trying to escape, and that was a more pressing problem. Gently, she pressed against her chest and tried to do the breathing she’d been learning. In the entire world, nothing stressed her as much as Clarke, though it was the good kind of stress that she was certain her heart doctor would not care to hear about at all.

The room was awash in the gentle glow of the few candles and nothing else. The bed was fresh, there were candles, there was wine, and in the bathroom a girl was putting on lace and waiting for the okay. And Lexa was absolutely losing her mind.

They went so long without, Lexa was unsure what this would mean for them, and to be honest, that thought only bothered her none of the time. Her brain focused on things like the feeling of Clarke in her hands and mouth and dear god, her heart leapt, set the record at the Olympics.

“Are you sure about this?” Clarke finally called as Lexa took a seat on the edge of the bed. “If you don’t feel well–”

“Clarke, I am a very passionate, very alive, and very in love with you type of girl, so yeah, I’m sure if you’re sure.”

“I’ve been sure since you started making out with me and doing that thing–”

“Come out already,” Lexa groaned.

She understood what that wolf in the old cartoons felt like, the one who howled and whose tongue would unroll over the table at the delectable sights on the stage. For a moment she spared a thought about how absolutely inappropriate old cartoons were, and how confused she suddenly was about sexual and racial politics in those old ones she used to watch in hospital rooms.

But then she shook her head and looked at Clarke. Hips were edged just with a bit of lace and black. Skin was on display. All of her. All of her was there, and she was almost naked, and Lexa had seen her in her underwear before. They lived together, they showered together. They did everything but, just like her old gym teacher Mrs. Mills once described. But Clarke was wearing nothing except lace that hugged her sinfully, and Lexa was finally able to do the everything but stuff. Or the stuff that came after but. Not the butt stuff. You know what, it didn’t matter, she decided as she got hung up on words.

The only thing she knew for certain was that she was fully anticipating her heart to go flying out from her chest like that old cartoon with the weird naughty wolf who watched the sexy lady dancing and singing, like a 1950s perv. Which was the worst and yet most accurate analogy.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so speechless or deep in thought,” Clarke grinned, knotting her hands together in front of her hips.

“I have never seen you wearing that, so…”

“Yeah?”

“You’re right,” Lexa nodded, still blatantly staring at all of the cleavage she was going to get to touch soon. “This would have killed me. Would have absolutely shredded my old heart.”

“I wanted to celebrate. I feel like a virgin again, which is weird.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Hopefully less awkward than the first time.”

“I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“Lexa… what does that mean?” Clarke worried, earning just a smile.

“Come here and find out.”

“I don’t know if that was sexy or…”

“Definitely sexy,” she decided.”You look so damn pretty.”

“Yeah?”

“You know exactly how good you look,” Lexa smirked, tugging the girl into her lap.

Lexa had a lot of thought. She had too many and they all disappeared when Clarke straddled her on the bed.

It wasn’t a crash, it wasn’t an explosion, it wasn’t even any different than anytime before, except that it felt very different and new and like it was the start. The blood thumped in her ears, in her hands in her legs, in her chest, and still Lexa persisted.

“I love you,” Lexa whispered when she pulled away to catch her breath.

“I know,” Clarke grinned. “Let me show you how much I love you.”

While the rest was a frantic mess of need, Lexa remembered the only two thoughts screaming through her head being, she’s going to kill me and this is the best heart attack of my life.

* * *

**Day 94**

“That’s for the kids!” Clarke reminded Lexa as she stole another piece of candy.

The kids on the front porch thanked her and scampered down toward the other houses. The witches on the deck all cackled while the ghosts hummed a song that clashed with the Monster Mash on a loop in the background.

“Clarke, I have a new heart inside of me, please be nice.”

“You can’t keep using that excuse for everything.”

The guests all mingled throughout the house. There were decorations and lights and candy and snacks and monster noises coming from all directions. From time to time, the doorbell rang and little princesses and astronauts appeared, much to everyone’s enjoyment, though as the drinks began to flow, so too did the amount each cute superhero or ghost was given.

“I’m going to try.”

“Next year, we’re just doing movies and handing out candy.”

“I don’t know,” Lexa furrowed and shook her head. “I feel like I have…”

“What?”

“I just. I feel like I have this need…” Clarke grinned despite herself. “The need. For speed.”

“You’re such a dork.”

It didn’t matter. Clarke kissed her anyway. The truth of it was, she liked the new kind of traditions that Lexa tried to start with vigor. She liked that she got to do it with her, even if that meant donning a leather bomber jacket and doing her best Kelly McGillis impression to her Tom Cruise. It didn’t hurt that Lexa looked damn good in the jumpsuit and aviators. It didn’t hurt that she was having fun.

“Next year, we’ll make Raven throw the party,” Lexa compromised after kissing the Charlie to her Maverick.

“I don’t know. I do like you in this.”

Clarke toyed with the uniform, lingering around the collar and hovering near her girlfriend’s lips. She caught herself doing it often, placing her hand on Lexa’s chest and feeling the steady beating there, like an anchor for herself to the world.

The party continued around them, music booming and some joke landing well enough to earn a loud chorus of laughter.

“I can’t be Maverick next year, too,” Lexa shook her head.

“You can wear it whenever you want.”

“Ohhh, kind of like my thing for you in scrubs.”

“Which I will never understand.”

“I like it when you check my vitals,” Lexa shrugged, smiling wickedly.

* * *

**Day 149**

The house on the hill on the edge of the bluffs, with its large wall of windows that overlooked the bay and the city in the distance, was quickly becoming one of the brightest spots in the neighborhood. Lights hung from every edge of roof while the yard housed plastic snowmen and reindeer galore. Inside wasn’t much different, with all manner of mistletoe and garland and soft white lights. But it was cozy.

Clarke shook the rain from her coat as she finally made it home after a long day. She hung her coat and kicked off her muddy boots, the warmth of the fire and the sound of Christmas music already greeting her.

It was foreign to her, but she was slowly learning what Christmas was supposed to entail. It involved a lot of decorations dug from the basement that coincided with a lot of Lexa’s happiest memories with her family.

Normally, it was pulling teeth to hear anything about her life, and yet when Christmas was involved, she had each memory ready and categorized and smiled so wide when she told them it was captivating. Clarke liked that part the most.

“We agreed that you weren’t going to buy anymore,” she shook her head as she made her way to the kitchen only to find Lexa wrapping another present.

“It’s for your mom,” Lexa tried to whine. “She gave me a heart.”

“You’re such a cute Santa.”

Clarke kissed her girlfriend’s cheek as she continued to tape the wrapping paper. It was serious work for her to wrap things precisely. There was a process to such things. And as much as Clarke teased her about missing her calling as a gift wrapper in the mall, Lexa was studious in her work, so much so, that Clarke’s gifts looked ridiculous next to her Home and Garden style lavish decorating.

“This is the best time of year. I love it.”

“I can tell. How was your day?”

“Not bad at all. My mom wants to come visit. I think I put it off til spring.”

“Lexa! That’s awesome. You haven’t seen her in so long,” Clarke cheered, hopeful to try to make her not worry about what it all meant.

“Yeah. We’ll see,” she shrugged, indifferent to it at all. “She says she’s going to visit often.”

“But it’s Christmas. And you’re the one always talking about miracles and such.”

“You’re my miracle.”

“I already said I’d make you more sugar cookies,” Clarke grinned, despite the line.

She wrapped her arms around Lexa’s neck and kissed her jaw. She inhaled that smell that was specific to the economist, this warmth that emanated from her skin, the same that she traced and fought for all day while she was away.

The present sat up on the table as Lexa surveyed her handiwork. Underneath their tree, completely decked out in handmade ornaments and ones from different places, some of their own presents waited to be opened.

“I mean it though,” Lexa insisted quietly, enjoying the feeling of Clarke’s weight on her shoulders and her arms like a scarf in the cold winter night. “I don’t think anyone would have stuck it out with me. You met me at this shit time, and you didn’t bat an eye. Minus that whole patient doctor line you refused to cross.”

“That whole pesky not wanting to lose my job thing did put a little delay in your plans to woo me.”

“Thank goodness I corrupted you beyond reproach,” she grinned proudly. “Can I open a present now?”

“You’re worse than a child!”

In an instant, arms were gone from her shoulders and Clarke shook her head as she moved into the kitchen.

“So is that a yes?”

“If you make one heart comment, I’m taking them all back.”

“I would never.”

“Mmmhmm, sure,” Clarke grunted as she dug for old take out for dinner.

Lexa didn’t care. She just smiled and sat back, watching Clarke ignore her and prepare to rant about the holidays in that enjoyable way that made everything a little more interesting. It really was a miracle, no matter what anyone wanted to say. Not the whole heart thing, but the fact that Lexa was able to give it away so quickly to this girl who didn’t know how to put up a Christmas tree.

It was a miracle that anyone would love her, and she never knew how to say it, but she was certain that Clarke did, and that was another small miracle in itself, but one that she kept to herself.

Instead, she just watched Clarke and agreed to whatever she asked about their dinner plans, completely infected by the season.

* * *

**Day 234**

The moment Clarke saw a woman waving from across the concourse, she knew who it was, and that hit her like a truck. Lexa waved, her other hand on the small of her girlfriend’s back, unaware of the short circuiting happening.

In under a nanosecond, Clarke remembered Anya, and her cheekbones and her eyes and her length. Both Lexa and her sister were tall and lanky and had slender chins. Little pieces started to piece themselves together, and Clarke felt her mouth go dry and her lungs shrivel up like a deflated balloon at the end of the party.

“You didn’t tell me your mother was Sloane Hughes,” Clarke hissed between clenched teeth as she slapped her girlfriend’s arm.

“Ow!” Lexa rubbed her arm, confused at the change of events. “I said she modeled a little before I was born.”

“That meant like the Sears catalog or something. Not Playboy and Sports Illustrated!” Clarke yelped, slapping Lexa’s arm again.

“Will you stop hitting me? I bruise easily.”

“I’m going to kill you,” she groaned, already embarrassed. “My mother modeled a bit,” she mimicked. “And the pictures. Why did I not see her in the few pictures at your house? And why didn’t you tell me?”

Lexa cringed slightly, waiting for another slap from the currently freaking out woman beside her. She just came to pick up her mother, and now she was being attacked, though, she admitted to herself, it was somewhat deserved for not dropping that bombshell on her girlfriend. But when people found out who her mother was, they made comments about having her pinned up on their wall or something. It slipped her mind by the time she met Clarke, what with the whole needing a heart distraction.

“You took an oath.”

“I’m not a doctor anymore.”

“Dammit,” Lexa furrowed, realizing the logic was sound. “What does it matter anyway? It’s not like you–” she eyed her girlfriend warily, earning a blush that went to her ears. “Oh, God, Clarke, no… please tell me… not you too… “

“I just had a picture on my wall,” she shrugged helplessly, her hands flapping in front of her awkwardly.

“You fantasized about my mother!”

“I was fourteen and I saw her in that old, lame rom com and then I found a poster in an old magazine and you know what it doesn’t matter. I was a kid.”

The words came out in a rush and Clarke toyed with her hair, tucking it behind her ears eagerly. Lexa stood there, mouth agape, confusion pouring from her entire body.

“You fantasized about my mother!” she teased, pretending to be stern and bothered. It wasn’t a new fact to learn about someone, honestly.

“It’s not like I knew you!”

“Still. She was old enough to be your mother.”

“Okay, stop!”

“I can’t wait to tell her,” Lexa chuckled. “This is hilarious. “

“You can’t!”

“I think I have to.”

Before Clarke could insist again, the embodiment of her early teenage fantasy was standing in front of her. Still tall and beautiful and aged well, she was everything Clarke’s little heart couldn’t handle, and she gaped like a fish while she hugged her daughter.

Her hair was light brown, like Lexa’s, though Anya certainly had more of her cheekbones. The eyes were shared between the girls, the slope of the chin and the set of the jaw lingering as well. Clarke’s heart was in her throat because this woman was over fifty years old and still looked like that poster that Clarke was certain was still hanging up in her childhood bedroom.

“And this must be the doctor who saved your life,” she turned to Clarke after kissing her daughter and holding her cheeks, smile wide and true.

“I didn’t… no. I mean. I didn’t do anything like that– All I did. No. I mean,” she stammered and swallowed. “I didn’t do the surgery or anything. I could have. I think. I mean. I’d seen it. Well. Okay. See. Hi.”

“You didn’t tell her,” Sloane sighed and gave her daughter and exasperated look. “Why do you do this to people, Lexa? I swear, it’s like you’re embarrassed of me.”

“She had your picture on her wall,” Lexa shrugged.

“Lexa!” Clarke yelped.

“Clarke, it’s fine,” her mother assured her. “You and many other teenage boys. Put Lexa through college twelve times.”

“Four.”

“This has to be the most mortifying day of my life,” Clarke decided, still shaking Lexa’s mother hand until she looked down and dropped it.

“I literally had congestive heart failure in front of you, Clarke,” Lexa reminded her. “I think trying to hit on someone and get them to show you their boobs while in a hospital bed is a little worse.”

“Nope.”

“You did what?” her mother turned to her once again.

And that was it, Clarke thought. No one could top the past fifteen seconds of her life as the sick, sick comedy that she knew it to be.

“Are we going to spend this whole visit in the airport?” Lexa rubbed her hands together and ignored all of the questions. “Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

The night out on the water was calm, and even though Spring was coming, the rain mercifully held off for a night, allowing the crisp, clear sky to turn to glitter and the city to echo it. The chill of the winter lingered when the sun disappeared, but that didn’t stop the party from enjoying the calm and rainless night.

Wrapped with a blanket around her shoulders, Clarke smiles into her glass of wine as she finished it and laughed as Sloan tells another story about her life, one that even Lexa hadn’t heard before.

“Alright, I’m going to run to the store real quick, as we’re out of wine,” Lexa decided, sizing up the table. “Don’t start on the ice cream without me, please?”

“We make no promises,” Clarke smiled, earning a kiss on her cheek.

“You’ll be okay?” she whispered.

“I’m not going to seduce your girlfriend, Lexa, though apparently I was in her head first.”

“Mom!” she groaned, closing her eyes and shaking her head at the thought. “Okay, now I see why you didn’t want me to tell her.”

“Hey, I don’t make the same promise,” Clarke teased earning another groan. “Go, we’ll be fine.”

“Alright, two minutes,” Lexa nodded, spinning the keys in her hand as she jaunted up the back steps and back through the house.

For a moment, the two just watched their common thread leave and forgot how to be human near someone else. It was a nice day, a good dinner. And Sloane was funny and charming and everything Clarke imagined in producing a daughter like Lexa. She still had this air about her, that Clarke remembered feeling when she looked at her picture on her wall.

But Lexa was secretly over the moon that her mother was flying to see her. She couldn’t remember the last time she did, and she certainly didn’t know how to say something like that. As much as she couldn’t understand how she wouldn’t come see Lexa in the hospital, Clarke kind of understood what it must have been like to be so afraid of her own child.

“You know, if you would have told me my daughter would be cooking such good, healthy food, I would have never believed you,” Sloane finally smiled, surveying the plates on the patio. “I could barely get her and Anya to stay away from the vending machines during appointments. They were sugar fiends.”

“It takes some arm twisting,” Clarke acknowledged. “She’s stubborn.”

“I’m sorry she didn’t tell you who I was. I didn’t even know she was having surgery. After her father, things just… I was… Family is complicated.”

“I have a mother, I get it,” she nodded.

“Lexa is so much like James,” Sloane smiled, almost wistful, almost sad, almost relieved, almost joyed. “She’s smart like him. Always smarter than me. I never stood a chance. And she’s dry and funny. But there’s also this… the thing that I loved most, what drew me to him, this life inside of them. It’s bursting out of them, almost.”

“Yeah. I thought that might just be her.”

“Oh, it is,” the mother agreed. “In her own way. But her father… He was kind of tall and gawky. Handsome to me, but before I retired I got some looks as to why I would marry this nerdy lawyer. But he asked me out, and it was bold and brazen, and he was the best person I ever met, in every way.”

“I’m sorry I never got to know him. Lexa doesn’t talk about it… him…”

“After the accident, I just kind of shut down. Refused to fly, locked myself away,” Sloane sighed and looked back at the water. “I think she stayed as far away as possible because I couldn’t get to her. Anya was the middleman. But if I had known, I would have gotten here.”

“I know,” Clarke promised. “If I had known that you didn’t know, I would have made her tell you.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she chuckled. “Do you know what Lexa told me when she told me about you?”

“That I’m a disgraced ex-surgeon who couldn’t hack it in medecine and so now I’m a florist who makes no money and has student loans?”

“Word for word,” she teased. “Now I know you’ve spent too much time with her. She told me that it was all worth it. All of it led to this moment with you. And as someone who watched it all from day one, I told her that was one hell of a hyperbole. She told me it wasn’t.”

Clarke smiled softly to herself and cleared her throat at the idea of Lexa talking so sweetly about her to someone else, to someone so important.

“I’m sorry,” Sloane apologized. “This house. It just brings back so much, and makes me really think about… everything. Gives me a bit of a new perspective. Reminds me of things.”

“No, no, I bet. I hadn’t thought.”

“You know,” she changed the subject quickly, regaining herself from her own thoughts. “I never let myself imagine it, but Anya already gave me a grandchild. Any chance I can expect anymore?”

“Oh. Um. Well.”

“Mom, we’ve been over this. Babies can only be made when a man takes his–” Lexa complained, lugging a paper bag in her arms.

“Lexa! You know damn well what I am talking about!”

“Saved by the wine,” Clarke grinned, never more grateful to see the love of her life.

“It only took her less than ten hours to get on the kids wagon,” Lexa sighed. “That’s a record, even for you.”

“I have many things I want to do as a grandmother.”

“She likes walking around with Marie and having people tell her there’s no way she’s a grandmother.”

“There’s more to it than that,” she insisted. “That’s just a perk.”

“One day,” Clarke finally offered, earning both heads turning toward her in an instant. “I mean… You know. One day, I’d like to have, a, you know– Try.”

“Yeah?” Lexa grinned. She paused her movements of uncorking the newest bottle of wine mid screw and stared at her girlfriend.

“Yeah,” she shrugged, smiling just as dopey.

“My work here is done,” Sloane said as she held up her glass for a refill.

* * *

**Day 239**

“Alright, I’m just going to come right out and say it,” Lex’s mother decided in the car. “I really like Clarke.”

The rain beat against the windshield, making it difficult to see despite the highest setting they were set at, but Lexa still took a beat to smile to herself. For some reason, she just anticipated the worst, but having her mother around was new and different, just like everything since that day Clarke kissed her.

“She’s great,” Lexa agreed.

“Smart, funny, beautiful, and she likes you a lot. Not in that mothering kind of way, but like, she looks after you. I like that.”

“Yeah, I’m fond of her.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

“What?”

Lexa was grateful they were slowing to the red light because to hear something like that on the highway might have killed them both. Her doctor had given her breathing exercises and such, to strengthen her heart, but then her mother showed up and those disappeared with most of her confidence.

“You’re in love with her. And at least someone was there when you were in surgery…”

“I already apologized for that.”

“Open heart surgery. Not just open heart,” Sloane shook her head gracefully. “To get a new heart, and you didn’t even tell me.”

“Are you guilting me or are you setting my dowry for Clarke?” Lexa rolled her eyes.

“I can multitask.”

“I like her, and I love her,” Lexa sighed, gripping the wheel slightly, afraid to look at the eyes she knew were on her. “I don’t know what’s going to happen between now and fifty years from now, I just know that I want to spend every day with her.”

“You are every bit your father’s daughter,” she grinned, rubbing her daughter’s neck before patting her cheek. “I left the ring your father gave me when he asked me to marry him. It’s in the top drawer of the old desk in the study. Put it to good use sometime, okay?”

“Thanks.”

As much as she wanted to argue and say that it was years or miles or decades away, Lexa just accepted her mother’s words because she couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to take that off and put it in a box and put it in the desk.

They changed, in a week. Things weren’t necessarily easier, but they happened and they were dealt with, and Lexa was almost certain that was family. Her mother told her to bring Clarke for a visit to the beach, and she told her to be good, and they made plans that probably wouldn’t happen for the summer. Or at least Lexa thought, though Clarke had a thing for making things happen.

By the time they made it to the airport, they were in a certain truce, both with the past and the future.

“Will you at least tell me when you graduate so I can come?”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

“I love you, Mom,” Lexa managed.

Arms wrapped around her shoulders, held her close, smothered her in that good kind of way that mothers were prone to do just when needed most. Like a child she never remembered being, Lexa hugged her back, just as tight, closing her eyes and inhaling.

“I love you, Lexa,” Sloane promised as she kissed her daughter’s forehead, clasping her cheeks tightly in her palms. “Be good. Take care of yourself, or at least let Clarke try.”

“Okay.”

“And let me know if you decide to get any other new organs so I can come next time.”

“Fine.”

* * *

**Day 331**

Even when the sun took its time disappearing, the sand remained hot. The waves hushed themselves to a state of relative calm on the beach, while the wind rocked the palms and trees, inflating the soft curtains that hung on all sides of their little home.

For a week, the island paradise was their home, and it was everything Lexa once dreamt about when she was stuck in a hospital bed with barely a view from her window. She spent an entire day just sleeping on the beach, feeling the sand and wind and salt. They went snorkeling and diving and boating and they stayed in their little house and enjoyed the pool and the hot tub and each other.

“We should move here,” Lexa decided as she closed her eyes and inhaled the smell of the beach and the sun on her own skin despite the evening setting in already.

“Yeah? I’m sure this place needs an economist and a florist,” Clarke chuckled from inside as she got another glass of wine for both of them. “Close your eyes.”

“Is this more lingerie?”

“Yes… no. But still.”

“Fine,” she rolled her eyes and complied.

She felt the chair dip slightly as Clarke settled between her legs and she grinned despite herself. The pale of her scar shone through on her tanned skin, but still, Lexa forgot who she was, just for a moment, and she was strong and alive.

“Happy birthday,” Clarke grinned, waiting for eyes to open and see the piece of cake and candle.

“My birthday hasn’t started yet back home.”

“I know. That’s why I could trick you. But it did start just four minutes ago here. We can celebrate in every time zone, like New Years, if you want.”

“I do like that,” Lexa nodded with a grin, appraising the girl lit only by the candle with the smile and the ocean behind her.

She had no doubt in her mind that they would be here in this moment. When she couldn’t breathe and Clarke was angry about her dying, Lexa just knew that this was going to happen, and so as it did, she wasn’t surprised, though she felt a certain joy in being right.

“How was this trip around the sun?”

“Well, it was the first that involved you in its entirety, so that’s something.”

“And a fresh heart.”

“Yes, that’s what I just said,” she rolled her eyes and smiled in the candlelight. “It was one of my best years yet.”

“And it’s only going to get better.”

“I don’t know if my heart can take it.”

“It can,” Clarke smiled and kissed Lexa sweetly. “I’ve seen the stress tests and lab reports. Now make a wish.”

With a small look, Lexa closed her eyes and made a wish, smiling to herself at the idea of it at all. The light disappeared a second later, and they were left in the dim light of the small fire on the opposite wall.

“Stop wasting wishes on my boobs.”

“Never.”


End file.
